Wine Tasting 25 Nov 2007

Ok, so this is a little bit late, but I thought that I would copy and paste my notes here for completeness... On 25 Nov 2007 we had a wine tasting with my folks, who were visiting for Thanksgiving. We had three wines, all German Rieslings:

Saint M 2006 Riesling - Pfalz region
11% alcohol
Bottled by Villa Wolf property of Ernst Loosen for Chateau Ste. Michelle
Qualitätswein - Product of Germany - Bottled by D-RP 142 463 in D-07231134
A. P. Nr. 5 142 463 01 07
Shipped and imported by Chateau Ste. Michelle, Woodinville, WA, USA
Price: $7.99 from Davidsons

Tasting Notes:
light gold color, medium body. slightly sweet, off dry, a bit of a tart/acid finish, nice balance... I've bought this several times, and find that it compares well against German Rieslings costing double! This is a very nice wine for "everyday" with casual dinners, or just sipping on its own.


Schmitges 2006 Riesling Qualitätswein
Gutsabfüllung - AP NR 25820711007
Estate Bottled by Weingut Andreas Schmitges D-54492 Erden
Product of Germany - Mosel-Saar-Ruwer
11% alcohol
Imported by Magellan Wine Imports, Inc. Centennial, CO 80122
Price: 15.99 from Davidsons

Tasting Notes:
pale straw color, medium body, some spritz when poured. Smooth, well balanced, crisp, tart finish


Mönchhof (Robert Eymael) 2005 Mosel Slate Riesling Spätlese
Weingut Mönchhof - Robert Eymael
D-54539 Ürzig/Mosel Gutsabfüllung A.P. Nr. 2602 029 004 07
Qualitätswein mit Prädikat - Mosel-Saar-Ruwer
The Mönchhof estate was founded in 1177, and today is managed by Robert Eymael. This Mosel Slate Spätlese was selected from the famous Erden Treppchen vineyard. The vineyard consists primarily of grey-blue slate which produces elegant wines with a crisp and refreshing acid structure.
Imported by Cellars International, Inc.
San Marcos, CA 92078 USA
for Rudi Wiest
8% alcohol
Produce of Germany
Price: $17.99 from Davidsons

Tasting Notes:
pale color, medium body, some spritz, smooth, noticibly sweet, good balance with acidity, nice finish
This was the wine that we served for Thanksgiving dinner.

Conclusions:

Of these three, Jeannette liked the Saint M best. Both Mom and Rich preferred the Schmitges as their first pick. I would have placed the Schmitges second, as I preferred the Mönchhof Mosel Slate. I had served the samples in 2 oz. plastic tasting cups, which were poured about 30-45 minutes before we were able to taste. Rich commented the next day that the Mönchhof tasted much better with dinner then it had the prevous night. I’m wondering if the Mönchhof didn’t sit well in the plastic cups? I think that I may avoid using the tasting cups in the future, and stick to regular glass wine glasses! All of these three are wines that I would buy again.

NetFlix Profiles

I discovered today that our new NetFlix subscription already has one of the features that I had always wished for with BlockBuster Online. NetFlix allows you to create multiple profiles, each with their own queue. You can assign the number of DVD "slots" assigned to that queue, so that the movies can be divided up between family members. Once a movie from that queue is returned, the next movie from that queue will be sent.

We always had trouble with BlockBuster when Eric ordered something like the entire season of "24" because it would send all three of the DVD's at once! Since each disc had several hours of shows to watch, it would take Eric a few days to get through each disc. In the meantime, no one else had any movies to watch, since the queue was tied up with the entire season. We tried to order each disc of the season individually, but then BlockBuster could never manage to send them in order, so you'd have to wait for the next one to come, so that you could watch it first...

I was glad to see that NetFlix has provisions for this, we'll see how it works... I entered the 34 movies that had been in my queue at BlockBuster into my NetFlix queue today. Then tonight I got several emails from BlockBuster saying that they had sent the next three movies, even though I cancelled my subscription yesterday! I guess that it is still active for another week or two...

Vine Catcher

My son, Eric, has been doing some freelance web development for the past year. One of the sites that he's been working with is really interesting.

Derek Bennington started Vine Catcher as a community forum for people to share their interest in wine, and pairing with food. I think that his idea is to help make wine more accessible for the common person who isn't a wine connoisseur or expert.

You can either browse the wines and recipes in the database, or search for particular criteria. The site uses a very simple and straight-forward rating system of 1-5 starts, instead of the traditional 100 point scale (which really starts at 80?).

Its very easy to setup a free account, and enter notes on wines that you try, which you can keep private or share with others.

I've been entering the wines that I've been trying, mostly German Rieslings, on VineCatcher for the past few months. Check it out!

Note Taking and Organizing Research

I have discovered a new application for note-taking and research and has quickly become my "favorite."

If you're familiar with the kind of websites called a "wiki" you know that its a webpage that users can edit. Voodoo Pad from Flying Meat is a "wiki" that runs on your own Macintosh.

If you're not familiar with a wiki, let me describe it this way: Imagine opening up a blank page in Safari that you were able to edit as if it were TextEdit.

You can create lots of pages within one document like a website, giving each page a name. Anywhere in the document where the name of a page occurs is automatically linked to that page. This makes it very easy to cross-reference items. Voodoo Pad will automatically suggest links for any text that is in mixed upper/lower case, like "MyPage" but you can highlight and link any string of text.

Imagine an electronic book with a glossary where anytime a glossary term appeared in the text it was linked to the glossary definition. I have recently developed an interest in wine tasting, so I created a Voodoo Pad document as a glossary of wine terms. I copied and pasted a glossary of terms from a website, and created a page for each term. Now as I copy and paste wine reviews and articles into my Voodoo Pad document, all of the terms are automatically linked to the glossary!

I also do a lot of genealogy research, which can quickly become complicated since one reference can apply to multiple people, whole families, or specific time periods or regions. I've tried using outlines, but have found that I have to copy lots of entries in multiple places, making it ineffective. For a while I gave up, and just collected lots of separate text files with notes, which I tried grouping in folders. Again I found that some references applied to more than one family, so my filing system approach fell apart. At least I was able to use Spotlight to search them!

Voodoo Pad has been a much more efficient tool for organizing this kind of unstructured information. I've created a page for each family name that I'm researching, and pages for each country, state, county, town, etc. When I find information on a specific person, I create a page for them. Other names or places that I have already researched are automatically linked, making it very quick to cross-reference. Entering the names of spouses, parents and children are automatically linked, without requiring any special formating.

Voodoo Pad allows you to define 'aliases' to pages, which are alternate names for the page. These aliases are also linked automatically whenever they are found in the text of any page. This works nicely for multi-language terms or names, or for people who were known by different names, or maiden vs. married names. Entering the married name as an alias to a page named with someone's maiden name ensures that either form of the name links to the same individual's page.

The pages can be plain text, or styled text. Pages can have rulers for margins and tab stops. There are basic style settings for fonts, sizes, styles, colors, and alignment. The text editing works just like TextEdit, so its very functional, although not exactly a complete "word processing" application. It also supports various styles of bullet lists and outline numbering, as well as simple tables. You can also drag and drop images, website urls, files, and applications into VoodooPad and they will be linked and ready to be opened just by clicking on the link. Linked pages can be opened in the main window, in a separate window, or in multiple tabs like in Safari. Voodoo Pad can also list of all of the pages in the document, even if they aren't linked from any other pages.

Voodoo Pad comes in three different flavors. There is a "lite" version that is completely free. The standard version has many additional features, but requires that you purchase a shareware license for about $30. There is a 15-day trial period so that you can try out all of the features. There is also a "Pro" version for about $50 that includes its own web server, so that the documents can be shared with multiple users like a "wiki" website. Their website has a cross-reference chart of features in each version for comparison.

The licensed version supports AppleScript, various plugins, and can export to the iPod, as well as multiple document formats like HTML, Word, RTF, or XML. One of the plugins can build a list of all of the pages in a document, which I use to periodically regenerate my main index page. There is also a plugin to alphabetize the lines (paragraphs) of selected text, which comes in very handy. Another plugin scans for "to-do" tags, which can collect to do items from any place scattered through your document. The licensed version also supports tagging pages with categories, so that related pages can be grouped together. You can also see a listing of other pages that link to the page you are on for bi-directional cross-referencing. See the full list of features here.

For techies, Voodoo Pad can also contain scripts in several languages, including AppleScript, shell scripts, Perl and Python. Any of these scripts can be executed from within Voodoo Pad using the "Run as Script" command.

In the couple of months that I've been using Voodoo Pad, its been updated several times for bug fixes, a few new features, and compatibility with Leopard. Its been very stable, and has always worked predictably. I have found it to be an indespensible tool for my daily work. I liked the lite version so well that I've purchased the full version, and love having the additional features.

If it sounds interesting to you, download the lite version, or the trial version, and give it a try. You can download it directly from the developers website listed above, or search for it on Version Tracker or MacUpdate. Give it a try!

German Riesling

Our neighbor Steve introduced Jeannette and I to some German Riesling wines last summer, we we enjoyed immensely! About the only wine that we had really liked in the past was something like the Beringer White Zinfandel.

For those not already familiar with them, Riesling is a white wine that originated in Germany. It is light and fruity, often sweet, with a balance of acidity that gives a very nice flavor. I find it to be much more interesting than Chardonnay or Pinot Gris. See Wikipedia for more details.

The wines that Steve shared with us were inexpensive German imports from Schmitt Söhne. Their US website is Little German or their main website is Schmitt Söhne Our local liquor store, Davidsons Liquors, carries them for about $6-9/bottle. That was inexpensive enough to start trying different kinds, see what we liked, what foods it went with, etc.

Switching to Netflix

Blockbuster has blown it again, at least for me... For the second time in two years, Blockbuster is closing the store closest to us, and at the same time they are raising their rates another couple of bucks a month!

We have been using the Blockbuster online service for the past year or so, and had been pretty satisfied with it... We got three movies at a time, and after we watched them we could turn them in at the store and get a free rental. By the time we were done watching we got from the store, the next movies would arrive in the mail.

The store that we used to go to a couple of years ago was only a couple of blocks from us, basically at the corner of our subdivision. When they opened a new store in Highlands Ranch, a couple of miles away, they closed the store by our house. While this was irritating, we adjusted to it after a short time. It turned out that our doctor moved their office to the building across the street from the shopping center where the Blockbuster was located, and we switched to a bank that had a branch located there as well.

The remaining locations that are near us are all about 5 miles away, with pretty heavy traffic to contend with... All are inconvenient enough that we wouldn't just want to run by them on a whim to check out movies.

Add to this the rate increase. We had been paying about $18/month for unlimited movies, with three out at a time. As I mentioned above, we could also turn them in at the store for free rentals, so we were able to watch lots of movies. With the price going up about $25 more per year, this was the last straw!

We have already started a trial subscription with Netflix, and have been pretty impressed so far. The leadtime to have movies mailed seems a bit faster than Blockbuster, typically only two days. Netflix is also nearly $5/month less than Blockbuster's new higher rate...

So, we're saying "Auf Wiedersehen" to Blockbuster...

I'm Back!

Although I've had this account on Blogger for a couple of years, I really haven't used it much... I'm going to try again, and will try to post more frequently!