Blood Red Wine

Posted by Tom Wark on Oct 31, 2005

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As any parent who has come by the Wark House the past few halloweens knows, we offer an open bar. Well, not necessarily an "open bar" as much as an Open Bottle.

So what should the the bottle be? Clearly it needs to be blood red. In my world that leaves out Pinot Noir. I think the choices are obvious: Petite Sirah and Alicante Bouchet.

Did you know that Alicante Bouchet is one of the few red grapes that actually possess red juice. Most red wine gets its color from the red skins. Not Alicante, although its skins do deliver the blackness that is usually used to describe this wine.

Petite Sirah of course is one of the teeth stainers with tannins up the wazoo. I’ve always thought of its color as purple, rather than red. But it will do.

Which Alicante Bouchets and Petites?

For Petite Sirah you’ve got to go with either Foppiano Vineyards (they practically invented the grape 100 years ago) or Stags’ Leap Wine Cellars, probably the best Petite Sirah ever to come out of the Napa Valley.

For Alicante Bouchet you’ve got a much more difficult task. I was thrilled when a client, Mayo Family Winery, decided to bottled an Alicante from the 2004 vintage. So we’ll certainly be serving that wine. But I need to find some others and I’ve yet to come across one. I’ll be calling around today.

But here’s the take-away, the message I implore you to hear: Drink beyond Cab, Merlot and Pinot. Buy wines you’ve never heard of before, wines you cannot pronounce, wines you usually skip over  because you don’t know much about them and you fear you’ll be forced to explain them at the dinner party you are going to. Buy these odd wines, open up a good wine encyclopedia, pop the corks and read while you sip. You have nothing to lose.

So, I’ve got the Halloween wines. The kids have their costumes. The pumpkins are carved, The decorations are up. This is gonna be good.

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