The Desert Wine Guy - So You Want A Wine Cellar

  
   Today I am going to be taking a break from wine reviews and am going to delve into a subject that might initially come across as a subject of interest to only the very rich. Today I want to talk about the wine cellar. The mere mention of someone having a wine cellar brings up comments such as "must be nice" or "ahh, to be rich". While this can be true just a little bit of research will show that if the purpose for you to have a wine cellar is to simply preserve your wine than anyone can indeed have a cellar. But if the purpose of having a cellar is to display your wine in wonderful and incredible decorated surrounding than yes, it is still indeed mostly for the rich. I think that the question we need to ask ourselves is are you simply looking to preserve your wine or are you looking to display your wine in a beautiful setting. The purpose of this article isn't to say that one is better than the other because it all depends on what you believe the purpose of a wine cellar is. For the purpose of this article we will simply take the view that the whole purpose of a wine cellar is to preserve our wine. If you start off with the basics you can always add to your cellar as your finances allow.

   Now, with that being said I think it's important to understand another important item and that is wine is alive. When we think about it the only way to preserve your wine is to keep it alive, that is what we are preserving, anything else leads to the degradation and therefore ruination of the wine. The conditions of the cellar (or room) in which we place our wine determine how healthy our wine remains and for how long. While we all seem to act as if wine is the finished product it really is not. Think about this for a second. How many of you guys have wines that you know are not ready to drink? Well what does that mean? That means that you feel the wine is not the best it can be. What that also means is that the wine is continuing to evolve or change. The wine might change for the better or the worse but the hope of course is that wine will change for the better. At it's core wine is either developing, improving or declining. At it's base wine is the juice from grapes that have live single celled, living organisms called Yeast(s) added to it to impart flavors and to create Alcohol (Ethanol) and Sugars.

There are also bacteria's that are placed into the grape juice to alter the final outcome and into what will hopefully become what we call wine. These events are caused because the Yeast is alive and causing these things to occur. This process of turning Alcohol into sugar is known as "fermentation". Various problems can occur during the fermentation process because the Yeast is effected by many different things which I won't get into because they are not pertinent to this article. There is also the process of using Bacteria to produce something called "Malolactic Fermentation" which still uses live organisms (bacteria). The wine we drink is constantly doing something and doing it because it is indeed alive. Knowing that wine is alive we have to do our best to keep it alive and productive for as long as possible. That is where proper storage or a wine cellar come into play. So we now know a little bit about wine and that we need to keep the living organisms in the wine alive but just how do we do that? Well, here is one reason why people want a wine cellar. There are things that are under our (the wine buyers) control and that we should strive for in order to either maintain our wines or allow them to grow, develop or improve. The room that we choose for all this to happen while the wine is at out our house is a POTENTIAL wine cellar. I say potential because this room must meet certain conditions in order to fulfill the purpose of a properly functioning wine cellar.

   There are faults that can exist in the room we choose that must be fixed prior to placing wine in that room. It is best to choose a room that initially has as few of these faults as possible before determining it as your cellar. The less faults the room has the less money we have to spend to eliminate the remaining faults. Without going in depth here are the main faults that can ruin your wines and as such should be eliminated in our potential cellar. Avoidance of improper temperature, the elimination or keeping to a minimum the use of UV lights, The maintaining humidity levels around 60-70% and keeping vibration away from our cellared wines are all important.
   I think by now you can see that it would not be too difficult keep your wine away from the above listed faults. You can in reality see that almost any room in your house in my opinion, can be called a potential wine cellar. As long as you can maintain the temperature at the proper levels and avoid the pitfalls mentioned, you have a wine cellar in reality.

   One last item. Please don't confuse a fancy room for the only type of wine cellar that can exist. The topic of designing a wine cellar is another topic for another day and should not be confused with the topic of having a wine cellar. 

                                            The Desert Wine Guy

www.desertwineguy.blogspot.com/

www.facebook.com/DesertWineGuy?fref=nf

https://twitter.com/DesertWineGuyLV

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgCUb3w1n2S_UGU2yYRkFYQ/videos 

The Desert Wine Guy - 2013 Canyon Oaks Chardonnay

   Hello everyone and welcome back to my wine blog. Today's wine that I am reviewing is a 2013 Chardonnay from Canyon Oaks which is a label produced by ASV Wines (http://www.asvwines.com/). ASV Wines is one of the largest wineries and grape growing operations in California and is located in the Arroyo Seco AVA (http://www.arroyosecowinegrowers.com/#home) which is one of nine different AVA located in Monterey County, California. So, lets get started now and see what this wine has to offer.
   This wine started off as a wine that was simply for decoration in my Kitchen wine rack and was never really meant to be drank. You might ask me why I decided to drink it then. I was really in the mood for a white wine and this was the only white that I had in the house (crazy huh?). I also didn't feel like going to the store so I was left with no other choice but to drink the white wine that was in the house. Well, now that I have told that sad story and gotten it out of the way let me move on and throw a few potential issues into the mix of this review. For one, this is a  2013 Chardonnay that cost $6 being reviewed in September of 2017. While I am at it, let me add in one more potential issue. This wine has never been stored in anywhere near what would be considered

preferred cellaring conditions. The one possibly saving grace as far as the wines storage conditions is that the room the wine was stored in did maintain it's temp at 70 degrees and while this is considered fairly warm to maintain a wine, at least it was at least consistent which is an important factor in preserving a wine. I would say that this really super inexpensive wine has had a tough battle to fight and whether it succeeded in maintaining the battle or not remains to be seen. One other thing I will tell you before I move on is that this wine was received from the Wine of the Month Club (http://www.wineofthemonthclub.com/) which I have always been very happy with. If you've read my review of the club (https://desertwineguy.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-desert-wine-guy-review-of-wine-of.html?m=0) you will know that I can say nothing but good things about them and no, I do not get anything from them to say that. Okay, let's get started on this review now.
   Let's begin here by discussing the varietal known as Chardonnay for a little bit. Chardonnay is the most common and well known variety of white grape in wine production today. The varietal is known as the King of white grape varietals and there are over 34 different clones of the grape. Once again we owe the country of France and it's Burgundy region a big thank you for another great grape varietal. The flavor profile for this particular varietal is really all over the page so to speak. The wine can go from fruity to smoky on the Palette and essentially there are many different styles of the varietal with different textures, fruit levels and acidity. One of the biggest issues that drinkers of Chardonnay have encountered is the tendency of winemakers to over Oak the wine causing an overly Buttery mouth feel. How do we really know then what the varietal should taste like and how can we judge the varietal itself? That is a good question and one that I unfortunately don't have an answer for you, that is something you will have to have to get together with your Palette on and determine for yourself.

   Okay, it's time, lets get into the heart of this review.  Let me begin by talking about the bottle itself. Look guys what I am about to say next is wrong, I know it is wrong but it is one of the factors that help me to initially pick a wine. A wines label will just tell me if it is a simple wine or not. Yes, yes, yes, I know that is silly and as I said, wrong so you will have to forgive me, I expect more (including a fancier label) from a good wine. You see, part of what attracts me to a wine is the label. Basically what I am saying is the Vineyard or winemaker needs to convince me first visually that the wine you made and want me to drink and that you put in the bottle is meant to be taken seriously. If the label is plain or silly and it should come out as a serious wine then the Marketing Director needs to be replaced and fast. In this case I simply did not care for the label on this wine at all and it made me think of a very non-serious, cheap (not necessarily inexpensive) wine that I wouldn't even have wasted $6 on if I were to see it in the store. Well anyway now that I have told you one of my wine pet peeves, let me go ahead now and talk about how the wine showed in my glass. 
   I tried to take a picture of the wine in my glass but it just didn't do the wine any justice. Sparkling in the Sun and Golden in appearance simply can't describe what I saw in my glass, it was almost as if a dye were added to the wine, it was truly that nice. Wow, sounds like a good start for our little $6 wine. I was really impressed visually but how does the wine look outside of the direct Sun.? A beautifully maintained Golden liquid is what I saw in my glass even when the wine left the direct sunlight and almost could convince you that you are about to drink an Old School type Chardonnay. I have had many wines that are four times this wines price whose appearance couldn't hold a candle to the appearance of this wine. I am indeed impressed.
   Onto the Bouquet of this wine now. Caramel and Asian Pear clearly shine thru here. A sweet Peachy aroma drifts out to my nose. A Baked Apple note comes to my nose as well. The wine smells as if it will potentially have a buttery feel in my mouth, I will give you a spoiler up front and let you know that it doesn't. With all of these fruity type notes I have to tell you that I am a little afraid to taste this wine. Being honest as always, I am expecting this wine to be a big time fruit bomb of sorts so to speak, I hope I am wrong. Well it's time, time to get to what this wine really does in my mouth so lets get to it.

An ASV Vineyard

   So, what was my first thought when taking my first sip of this wine? Certainly this is an extremely fruit forward wine. As I stated previously, you all know now that a Chardonnay can exhibit so many different characteristics. This is a wine whose Bouquet seems to be right in line with the Palette. I liked the Asian pear on my Palette and the way it was expressed although it was very sweet.  Let's talk about the "buttery" aspect that the varietal may sometimes display for a minute. I did not sense any "buttery" note but I did however sense that there was a small amount of an oily type texture on my Palette, nothing overdone here guys but it was present and actually made for a rather smooth wine that had possibly a hair of acidity on the finish. As I mentioned earlier, this wine has a lot of fruit and I would go as far as to say that it is an extremely fruit forward Chardonnay and unfortunately it is indeed the fruit bomb that I feared it would be. There is a note of baked apple present here in the wine but unfortunately that simply only added to the overly fruity and sweet, sugary notes. The slight acidity note on the finish that I mentioned earlier tries to fool you into believing that the wine might have at least some sort of complexity to it but it isn't and is simply overrun by the sweet fruity and sugary notes. The bottom line here is that the wine is an overly sweet, fruit bomb and one that I could not appreciate. 
   If on one hand, you are not a real wine lover and you are just looking for a sweet, cold "Jug Wine" to mix with juices or 7 Up then you might have come across your new drink so this wine might have a positive side for it but you are going to have to wait until it is pool time again. If on the other hand you are looking for a real Chardonnay, stay away from this wine.
   Wrapping things up here. On The Desert Wine Guy rating scale I give this wine a sad 82 (not recommended, offensive notes or lacking and redeeming qualities.) points.Sorry folks but this was way too fruit forward and way too sweet for my liking, it had no redeeming qualities to it.

                                                                                                                               The Desert Wine Guy

www.desertwineguy.blogspot.com/
www.facebook.com/DesertWineGuy?fref=nf
https://twitter.com/DesertWineGuyLV
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgCUb3w1n2S_UGU2yYRkFYQ/videos