Betty's Wine Musings

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Looking for a Good Team-Building Activity?

September 16, 2020 by BettyKaufman Leave a Comment

As we work from home, many of us aren’t feeling the camaraderie that comes with working with others, even if we’re on Zoom calls for hours a day. So, here’s the big question: How do you find a team-building activity that will help restore some of the goodness of being on a productive, fun work team?

Can Wine Be Part of a Team-Building Activity?

Yes. Yes. Yes. During the past 4 months, I’ve done a bunch of virtual wine tastings for work groups. In the past month and on a go-forward basis, the number of work-team tastings is increasing.

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Filed Under: Enjoying Wine Tagged With: team-building activity, virtual wine tasting

Why Is There a Foil Capsule on Wine Bottles?

January 20, 2021 by BettyKaufman 6 Comments

My Ohio wine friend Jim Sperk just shared this amazing story about why we find a foil capsule on each wine bottle. I had no idea. Did you?

Why the Foil Capsule?
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Filed Under: Wine 101 Tagged With: foil capsule

Celebrating Ten Years of Betty’s Wine Musings

January 13, 2021 by BettyKaufman Leave a Comment

I’ve been writing my Wine Musings wine blog for more than 10 years now! Each week, I enjoy figuring out what I want to learn more about and sharing it with you. This week, I’m sadly not feeling very inspired. The horrendous situation at the Capitol, coupled with my finding out today that I lost a college friend to cancer, is just not working for me. So today I’m going to go back in time and share some of my favorite old posts.

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Filed Under: Enjoying Wine Tagged With: cabernet franc, varietals, wine musings, wine regions

Four Best Practices for Wine in 2021

January 6, 2021 by BettyKaufman Leave a Comment

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!!
Happy New Year!!!

I’m not a big believer in new year’s resolutions. I find that they stress me out. Who needs that at the start of the year? I know I don’t. But I thought it might be fun to come up with some best practices for wine for 2021. Best practices don’t mean you have to do them. They mean you know what to aim for. So a lot less stressful than resolutions. Here we go.

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Filed Under: Enjoying Wine Tagged With: best practices

Comparing Two Pinot Noirs from Two Terroirs

December 30, 2020 by BettyKaufman Leave a Comment

Ready to compare two Pinot Noirs from two terroirs? I was! And thankfully, WineShop At Home, the Napa winery I’m affiliated with, gave me the opportunity. Our winemaker, Alex Reble, is French. So, the winery often needs to bring Alex French grapes (actually juice) to play with. The cool thing is that in the past few months Alex made two Pinot Noirs, one from France and the other from the United States. I was excited to compare the two, because it gives us the opportunity to compare two terroirs. In this article, we’ll explore these two wines.

Comparing Two Pinot Noirs
Comparing Two Pinot Noirs

What Is Terroir?

Let’s start by defining terroir. Terroir (pronounced Tare wahr) is a French term that embodies the growing environment of the grapes. It encompasses everything from the soil content to the slant of the hill to the direction of the sun to the amount of fog and precipitation.

In the Old World wine region (France and the rest of Europe), terroir is considered to be the most important determinant of a wine’s style. In the New World wine region (United States, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Africa and other non-European countries), the grape is considered to be the most important determinant of a wine’s style.

A Word of Warning About the French Pinot Noir that We Tried

Most Pinot Noirs from France are grown in the Burgundy region of France. It’s why when you buy a red Burgundy in the United States, it’s always a Pinot Noir. But in the last 20 or so years, a number of French wineries are breaking the rules and growing Pinot Noir in other regions of France. WineShop At Home’s Joy Cellars French Pinot Noir was that type of wine. Grown in France but not in the Burgundy region.

Comparing the Two Pinot Noirs

I did a comparison tasting with three of my work buddies.

Our Fearless Tasting Group
Our Fearless Tasting Group

We liked both wines but found the United States wine (grapes were from Lodi) to be lighter and the French wine to be warmer and more enveloping. We decided that the American Pinot would be a great afternoon wine and the French Pinot would be a great dinner wine.

Please take a listen to everybody’s comments.

Sadly, WineShop At Home has sold out of the French wine. So, even though it was our favorite, we can’t get any more bottles. That’s okay. WineShop At Home always produces great wines, so we get to look forward to what’s next.

Learnings

We had a great time doing our tasting, but did we learn very much? Do we know that the French terroir is more attractive to us? Not really. We learned that we liked this French wine because it had a warmer, more enveloping feel to it. But that was just two wines. This tasting experience doesn’t tell us that we like French Pinot Noirs better than American Pinot Noirs. It’s a single data point that is nice to have. But we probably need to do at least 20 more side-by-side tastes of French and American Pinot Noirs to truly understand the differences between the terroirs and confidently determine our preferences.

If you have done a lot of comparative Pinot Noir tastings, please share your thoughts with us.

Thanks and Merci.

BettyPhotoCircularAs an independent wine consultant with WineShop At Home, I absolutely enjoy bringing a taste of the Napa wine country home to you one sip at a time. Whether you simply love to drink wine, seek a special personalized wine gift, or are in search of a new wine jobs opportunity as a wine consultant, feel free to contact me for a truly unique wine tasting experience!

Cheers, Betty Kaufman
WineShop At Home

Filed Under: Varietals and Wine Styles Tagged With: Pinot Noir

Happy Holiday Memes 2020

December 23, 2020 by BettyKaufman Leave a Comment

Every year, I enjoy sharing some of my favorite happy holiday memes as a way to bring fun to the holidays. Given the disaster that was 2020, the need for happy holiday memes is greater this year than ever before. I’ll start my blog with some dark COVID-19 memes but will follow those up with some truly fun holiday memes. I hope this causes you to smile and maybe even giggle. And I hope you are able to share this with the people in your household. As always, if you have any happy holiday wine memes that you can share with me, I would be grapeful.  

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Filed Under: Holidays, Weddings and Gifts Tagged With: happy holiday, meme

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