Yay; Nay.

Two quick wines for review.
The first wine is the 2011 Fairview Pinotage; an unfortunate wine––seeing how it is pinotage, a varietal that I am an advocate of. The second wine is the 2011 La Maialina Chianti, a fair, delicious wine that is sure to please.

What? Expecting an insightful post? I’ve got two books coming down the pipeline, as well as a script that is being repaired (fixing its current, and unfortunate, malady: an acute case of awful). There are things to be done. I’ve had very little time to indulge in wine. Although, hell, I should fix both of my problems by “researching” a new book. I shall call it: Forty Nights of Drinking. Or: How to Laugh At Chirrosis.

The Two.

2011 Fairview (Chalres Black) Pinotage – $14
Sniffing right in: dark tones with cherry zeal. Some sweet, alcohol intense aromas.
Disappointing, to say the least. Very heavy and dark in the back. The wine fights you as you get to the bottom of your first glass. The sweetness intensifies with every sip. It tastes manipulated, like the vintners did not trust the end product enough without adding in a few dosages of sugar to the final mix. Secondary malolactic fermentation? I suspect so.
Skip it.

2011 La Maialina Chianti – $12
A tart smell, light on the sugar and a cogent mineral zing.
A very easy sipper that starts to go dark as you let it breathe. But, how pleasant the ride is. There is some fair amount of tannin for this chianti; this is a welcome surprise, however, seeing as how the acidity takes up arms to match it. Nothing will challenge you here, but it’s a ball to have with a light meal, or on it’s own.
Worthy.

Here and There.

We’ve got two wines for you. One is the 2011 Kirkland Signature Bordeaux Supérieur, the other is a Syrah from Santa Ynez, California. These wines were the last we consumed while residing in our old apartment in the interior of Los Angeles (read: hell, the devil’s asshole, David Lynch’s Dune). We are now stationed, much to are delight, in Santa Monica. If you are unfamiliar with Santa Monica, it is home to bizarre cultural significances and odd social behavior. For instance, peanut butter is expensive at the corner market. Corpulent individuals are frowned upon as they are passed. Canines are required to be small, yapping constantly, and useless to the world. And it is impossible to have anyone understand you unless you punctuate the beginning of a sentence with the word “like.” The actual meaning of the word “like” is no longer clear to me, like a lost biological term you learned as a freshman; “like” seems to be a formal deceleration of regal classification.

Luckily, wine remains to be a panacea to the world.

2011 Kirkland Signature Bordeaux Supérieur – $12
An aromatic wine that smelled like a delicate socialite.
We noticed a sweet linger as it washed over, around and down our gullets. Slightly cheap in style, some tannic muscle, earth, stone and licorice. Not terribly expressive, but we were not bored when drinking from her. She put up a good fight, although it was not a clean fight; it was messy with a little slapstick.
Worthy.

2011 Melville Estate Syrah, Estate Verna – $25
The Melville smelled thick and hinted of sweet things to come reminding me of Fall.
When tasting it, we found that it was a good wine up to a point. It was mellow in our mouths with a slight tannic back end. Once the air had gotten to it, the flaws came out like roaches in the dark; it was not horrific, namely unsavory, leaving a shallow feeling for you senses. We drank the bottle, because it was better than many others.
Skip it.

Some Merlot, Pretty Damn Good After All

I’m one of them now.

I have, for a time, tried my best to distance myself from the ones that now surround me––considering myself to be an outsider for whatever duration I will remain in Los Angeles, or California as whole. But one cannot accomplish this. Not when wine is to be explored.

I joined Bevmo! It’s one of these chains of stores, selling all things alcohol, but wishing to be something more approachable. What a silly little store. But god bless them for having wines, nonetheless. The overall appearance was something more reminiscent of dust-on-top-of-a-bookshelf than I cared for. Above me, playing, was a terrible remake of a Gorrilaz song that I happened to admire. A song re-sung and accompanied by a flamenco guitarist is not a necessity in this world. There was an employee who looked to be weeping over some matter that was indecipherable to me. In short, it felt the very air around me was shouting, saying to pick your wine and get the hell out.

But what kind of investigator, what kind of writer, would I be if I simply left without poking around? I explored the sections. Some of the wines seemed fair, the others frightened my better subconscious, the part of my brain that knows an awful wine before consuming it. It’s this part of my brain I need to better attune myself to––for it plays lute music and dances carelessly into the evening.

It’s been several months since I’ve mingled with merlot. The time felt right, and there was a sale on a Parcel 41 merlot from 2009. Following a drought in the winter of 2008, California had a very wet Springtime, followed by a moderate summer and fall that greatly supported a robust season for vintners.

This was good and bad. There was a surplus of wines that hit the market. Those who made good wines put out their great wines; and those who made poor wines did the same. Both at their highest capacity.

2009 is a gamble for wines from Paso Robles and Napa, Santa Ynez. Yet the Parcel 41 should please just about anyone, I was pleased to find.

2009 Nine North Wine Company Parcel 41 – $17
The nose had little hope to it: there seemed to be an over-exhilarated sense of richness, jam, and simplicity.
However, delving into it, we found the wine to be nothing of the sort. Dark for a merlot. Its taste, quite agreeable; it’s mouth feel, like a satin liquid delving down deep into the back of your throat. Very nice, but lacking the sort of depth that causes one to praise a wine. It’s how it goes for merlot. But this was a great merlot, as opposed to so many others that lack even an iota of fun, of precision that the grape can exhibit.
Worthy.

After purchasing this wine, I had a group meeting with a new group of writers. We properly evaluated each others work (all at various stages of terrible, of course) and had chatted about What exactly is superfluous in screenplays. It turns out, bare bones is most welcome in today’s writing scene. We don’t have the time or patience for prose in bulk. Perhaps many of us are tired, or impatient, with the bullk of many things. Wine (especially) included.