I started this blog entry below and am adding to it now on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 here at home at 9:10 AM on a cool, drizzly day and so I started my morning by walking outside and clipping cuttings of new growth from our forsythia bushes to transplant. I figured that as long as it was damp and wet that the cuttings would take and spread across our back wooded yard. I'm a gardener as well as an artist and a wine educator/enabler and so I thought I would make the most of the circumstances because I am a like that. Quick : get as many things done so that at the end of the day you actually feel like you have accomplished something. I like that feeling a whole lot!
I also typed two poems into my chatpoetry.blogspot.com section and now I will post this partial blog on The Crossings Marlborough Awatere Valley, New Zealand wines that Simon Beck tasted me on. We had the 2008 Sauvignon Blanc, the Chardonnay 2007 or 2008?, and the 2008 Pinot Noir. For more information on these wines go to : www.thecrossings.co.oz and ask winemaker Matthew Mitchell what he thinks about them.
As I said earlier I like what I have tasted here and it will be fun to include them soon. I will have to think what we need at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits most and I am now leaning towards the Chardonnay as we get some requests for Chardonnays and never have enough to choose from because we buy so many Sauvignon Blancs as they are the most popular and requested by our customers.
I really enjoyed talking with you Simon : we really seemed to hit it off quite well and had some great conversation and exchange of ideas. That's always exciting for me becasue along with the excellent wines there are always the people behind them and their stories and that interests me as much as the wines. I do have to sell them : I do have to recommend them and make them come alive for my customers before they purchase them. I would rather tell them stories about the wines such as that in the 2008 vintage that all the vineyards of The Crossings were used to make this fresh, lively and bright dry white. That means that all the vineyards have vines that are old and mature enough to contribute grapes to the final blend to make it as interesting and as diverse/multi-dimensional as it can be.
I also learned from Simon something of the Awatere River and that is something new to me as I have not been there yet and been able to see what Simon referred to as a " vigorous and unspoiled " river. I can imagine it in my mind and of course look forward to seeing first-hand some of this unspoiled beauty that all these owners and wine-makers refer to when talking about their beloved New Zealand. I am hoping to make it my next wine destination - perhaps as early as next year.
So, read on and enjoy these pictures. I will add more later. Cheers and thanks Simon and see you sometime soon I hope. I'm off now to see my daughter for her Master's in Education graduation ceremonies. This is also very exciting for me ... TONY
It's amazing how many wineries and wines I have never see before and it happens for me each and every day and that's hard for me to believe as I have been in the winebusiness since 1981 here in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area when I took my first wine job working under Dan Kravitz ( now the owner of Hand-Picked Selections imports ) at Rex Wines & Spirits over across from the Mazza Galleria on Wisconsin Avenue N.W. at the D.C. Maryland border.
I have never seen these The Crossing New Zealand wines and yet I enjoyed thrying them very much and will include one or more of them in the future. We will probably organize a tasting around them on one of our weekends with our local rep as well. This always helps to get them a bit better known by a number of our customers and that's a really good thing as there is such a vast ocean of wines available from which to pick.
I'm home now and will have to get to work later today to complete this as all my notes on these The Crossing Kiwi wines are there. I remember being favorably pleased by them all : that's my recollection now three weeks later as it is now May 23rd, 2010 and Simon Beck the North America sales manager came to Cleveland Park Wines and Spirits ( 3423 Connecticut Avenue N.W. Washington D.C. 20008 Tel:202-363-4265 www.clevelandparkwine.com sales@clevelandparkwine.com ) on April 27th, 2010 to taste the wines with Chris Barker and me.
I love how Simon spoke a whole lot with his hands as he described the wine, their flavors and their styles - as well as the soils and areas from which they came from to us. It made the wines come a bit more alive for me as I snapped away with all my pictures and enjoyed tasting them and watching his show of hands, body movements and facial expressions - like a three-ringed circus really and much appreciated by me being an artist.
I hope that you also enjoy some of these more artsy angles that I have taken some of these pictures to display different aspects of the moment that we enjoyed here in Washington D.C. at this particular period and time. I like to have the pictures tell a pretty good story all by themselves even without the text that I include later after downloading them here.
I love seeing the color of the wines like in the photo above. Don't you? Makes me want to have a glass right now. That's the idea I believe ...
No comments:
Post a Comment