XMas 2011: Top Secret Santa Wines

5 12 2011

Yep, that time again.

Over the last week I have somehow found myself volunteered to be a part of not one but TWO Secret Santa gift swaps at work.  I’m not really sure how I feel about this.  The office Secret Santa pool is always fraught with dangers because (1) you often don’t know your co-workers well enough to get them anything truly personal that you know they’ll like, and (2) there is usually a spending limit imposed on your shopping (in my case, $15 for one pool and $25 for the other) that prevents you from buying most types of gifts that would be winners with just about anyone.  Since I feel that Secret Santa-ing chocolates is basically an admission of defeat, this year I’ve done the logical thing and decided to stick with booze.  I may not know if my office-mates read Malcolm Gladwell fan or listen to Johnny Cash or could get any use out of tree ornaments or candle holders or plants or winter gloves, but I do know that if they’re remotely sane and not prohibited by religious or medical reasons, they will enjoy a good bottle of wine, so I’m going to get them one.  Or two.  And since you might be in the same situation I am (hell, you might even work in my office; there’s 2,000 of us in there), I thought it might be useful to run down a few can’t-miss bottles that will have everyone hoping you pull their name out of the hat next year.  Without further ado, here are PnP’s Top Secret Santa Wines for 2011 in the $15-and-under, $20-and-under and $25-and-under categories:

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Categories : Tips & Tricks

Wine Review: Cameron Hughes Lot 179 (2007)

13 08 2011

I very much regret not writing this review last year (you know, before this blog even existed) so that people could have actually gone out and found this wine.  In the last 12 months I’ve probably bought upwards of 20 bottles of it both for myself and as gifts for others, due partly to its awesomeness and partly to its criminally cheap pricing; after cracking tonight’s bottle, I (tragically) only have 3 left.  It’s the closest my place has had to a house wine in 2010-2011…I’m definitely going to miss it when it’s gone.  Before I jump into the story of how it came to be, a huge shout out is owed to Tim from Highlander Wine & Spirits, who clued me into it on the very first night I met him — let’s just say he set the bar very high for himself right off the bat.

If this was Back to the Future, I would have told you to buy this already.

Cameron Hughes is based out of San Francisco, but he’s not your typical Californian wine producer.  Instead of owning a tract of land in Napa, growing grapes there and making them into wine, he’s a négociant, which means that he buys grapes, juice or even finished/partly-finished wine from other growers/producers and completes, packages and sells it under his own label.  Négociants are much more well known in European wine regions like Burgundy, France (Jadot and Leroy are big-name examples) than in the US, but Hughes is showing that the business model works just as well on this side of the Atlantic.  In many cases, Hughes buys excess grapes/juice from high-end Napa producers; they get quick cash in a capital-intensive industry and get rid of overflow product in a way that doesn’t devalue their own brand (Hughes is generally not permitted to reveal his sources), while Hughes gets high-quality raw materials for pennies on the dollar.  However, with Lot 179, the story is different:  what is in the bottle is actually the finished product of another winery that went out of business before its 2007 vintage was able to hit the market. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Wine Reviews