The world is better off for places like Barcelona.  Wines such as Anima Negra AN/2 from Majorca’s red callet grape and Bodegas Palacios Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894 from Rioja’s white viura variety don’t make it onto just any wine list.  But at Barcelona Restaurant and Wine Bar, ten minutes off of I-84 in (of all places?) West Hartford’s suburban trendy Farmington Avenue retail district, they sit comfortably on a comprehensive Spanish wine list that rekindles memories of my two favorite Spanish lists in this country; Taberna de Haro in Boston and Casa Mono in New York City.

All three lists have something in common besides size and volume.  They hold pricey classic choices like Vega Sicilia, Pingus, and Clos Erasmus while featuring depth in less popular and remote wine growing regions like Bierzo, Majorca, and the Basque country. Wines of great elegance, food friendliness, and unique terroir hail from these hidden spots to challenge juicy modern garnachas, classic tempranillos, and racy monastrells. Great rewards hide beyond modern fruit driven values and classic producers for curious wine adventurers as hungry to learn as I am.  On a recent and lively Saturday evening of tapas indulgence at Barcelona, I was reminded one more time that zagging instead of zigging straight to the proven producers can pay large dividends. $110 at the restaurant bought these two magical bottles of wine. You can buy both at retail for $30 and $19 respectively

**** $30 2008 Bodegas Palacios Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894

The wine is a blend of primarily 95% viura, the most popular white variety in Rioja blancos, and then 5% malvasia. News to me, viura is the name used in Rioja for the macabeo variety, more commonly relied on in northern Spain for Cava production. I ordered this wine with memories of tasting my first white tempranillo at a Rioja tasting earlier this year.  In this case, the viura/malvasia blend showed a caramelized, lime, and honey nose with hints of toast and cotton candy to lure you in.  Most remarkably, the wine lands with amazing richness and contains an acidic linearity to provide structure and framework to the wine’s lusciousness. Cosme Palacio is co-fermented in barrel and aged in oak, but retains a bright fruit core that never yields to the wood.  This is an amazingly sexy wine because of its richness and tantalizing aromas, and its great structure gives enough balance to render it a classic choice.  I could linger over this wine all night, it’s that good.

***1/2 $19 2008 Anima Negra AN/2

I am a sucker for wines made on islands.  Call me silly, but I dream about the isolated terroir, surrounded by water, connected to no other spot. I think about the wines I have tasted from a small island off Sicily’s coast and how it is possible to imagine tasting the salt air, morning dew, and volcanic soils.  Or at least I thought I did.  So experimenting with this second wine from Majorca’s Anima Negra made from 65% callet, 20% mantonegre and fogoneu, and 15% syrah was an easy move.  The fruit is fermented in steel and then aged for a little over a year in French and American oak.  It’s a medium light ruby color, with rich and bright cherry aromas buffeted by wafts of tobacco.  The wine’s distinction comes in its weight; a softness without hard edge and a fruity lightness that appears to actually melt in your mouth. No major league forward ripeness and volume that you are accustomed to in big garnachas, just a pleasantly round and mellow mouthful of wine that is light on its feet and washes over your palate like it belongs there.  It’s a great food wine, and had enough acidity and brininess to stand up to the boldly spiced tapas that covered our table.  I am not sure I have ever tasted a wine just like it.  It has elements of gamay and pinot noir, but is not like either of them.  As the wine lingered in the glass, even some clove and cinnamon spice emerged.  It is a fascinatingly complex wine that just wants to please and accomodate your meal.  A killer value.

Wines like these keep me enthusiastic about wine discovery and realizing there is always something new just around the corner that I won’t ever believe I’ve never tried before.

Drawing up the perfect attack on a classic restaurant wine list creates the same adrenaline level NFL coaches experience prepping for Sunday games. At least it seems that way; it’s both exciting and nerve wracking knowing one or two calls can define a dinner’s outcome. Planning is required. Have we worked with the restaurant’s wine list before?  What language can we use with this particular sommelier to trigger the right personalized advice?  Are we value or treasure hunting? Older or new releases?  Hard to find limited production wines or a repeat favorite known to please?

At dinners with a bunch of wino comrades, debating and decision making are as much a part of the evening’s fabric as any other stage of the meal. Other nights involve guests less willing to sacrifice time and brain cells debating wine selection. Last week at Veritas (oenophile nirvana) with Dan, I found myself somewhere in the middle.  We had a significant amount of news to catch up on, but the wine was equally important to both of us.  I had not worked with the Head Sommelier Rubén Sanz Ramiro before so I did not feel comfortable enough turning the entire experience over to him nor burying my head in the epic Veritas wine list for twenty minutes.  Here is the game plan I followed:

Proven White Wine Value: Kick-Off

We needed something to drink immediately, but didn’t want to trump our early catch up conversation with solitary wine list huddles.  Nor did I want to rush into a big up-front cash investment without enough time to think things over.  Not having established rapport with the sommelier yet, delegating was off the table.  I turned to the Loire section and quickly ordered the **** 2010 Huet Clos du Bourg Sec.

Our Boston tasting group had just conducted a blind tasting of Loire Valley chenin blancs and this Vouvray was my favorite.  It jumped off the list as an easy choice for the straight forward enjoyment and palate awakening I was hoping to quickly uncover.  While the “sec” designation is true to the wine’s overall dry nature, there is enough residual sugar framed by significant acidity to qualify it as a shoe-in for a pleasing start to the evening.  The later vintage did not disappoint with familiar steely notes, hints of background sugar, grapefruit and lemon meringue delivered in a round and luscious mouthfeel, chalk, and a crisp finish.  It’s a go to wine, and one that didn’t break the bank at roughly $70 on Veritas’ not-so-cheap list.  While we had a long game ahead of us, it was a perfectly designed kick-off play.

Cellared But Not Tried: Third Quarter Audible

With the dinner unfolding and middle courses arriving, this was no time to fool around.  I called time out and spent three minutes on the sideline scanning the list.  Without leaving the Loire section, I stumbled upon the ***1/2 2007 Clos Rougeard Les Poyeux.  I am an admitted sucker for Clos Rougeard, had tasted the already immediately enjoyable 2007 Saumur Champigny, but wondered if the Les Poyeux would provide as much immediate accessibility.

The wine also sat in my cellar and this was the perfect chance to check it out without draining my limited 2007 Clos Rougeard stockpile. Not wanting to waste too much more time with the list, I went with it.  I called for a producer that always knocks me to the turf.  This particular cabernet franc made by Rougeard’s Foucalt brothers showed trace hints of its truffle and licorice bones, but remained seriously tight all the way through to the end of the bottle.  It never opened up.  The wine seems like it will stay closed down for at least several years to come.

While the move informed delaying future 2007 Les Poyeux drinking, it did not do as much for our dinner.  It was a win/lose; I should have consulted the sommelier.  With just one question about its approachability (admittedly, a doubt I quietly pondered) he would have known the wine style I leaned towards and could have dealt a more accessible alternative.  Live and learn; turnover.

Consult Sommelier, He Understands Me Now: 4th Quarter

Rubén agreed the wine was too tight to really appreciate.  But, we went to school on that experience together and now had the beginnings of mutual understanding.  I asked him what he would drink next if he wanted something similar, but at the peak of its development.  He suggested the ****1/2 1998 Bois de Boursan Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee des Felix.  I knew ’98 to be a prodigious year in Chateauneuf du Pape but had never heard of the Cuvee des Felix blend.  It turned out to be the first Cuvee des Felix vintage.  Rubén assured me this Boursan held the style I had probably hoped for with the Clos Rougeard, and was perfectly ready to drink now.

Touchdown!  The Boursan was a massive mouthful of well aged wine that smoothly coated the palate with unabashed silkiness, delivering rich and advanced raspberry and black cherry fruit flavors, animal fur and mushroom aromatics, and a streak of serious acidity to keep the wine as lively as it was exotic.  It generously expressed the licorice flavors the Clos Rougeard held closer to its vest.

The strategy worked and created a rewarding evening of drinking.  The structure of the ordering, inside this wine temple called Veritas, helped to keep my adrenalin in check.  Step 1: Known delicious white wine value.  Step 2: Classic wine laying in my own cellar to monitor drinkability.  Step 3: Ask the sommelier to follow your early moves with his own superior list knowledge.

What’s your game plan?

As the 2012 wine blogging season kicked off, three notable wine bloggers weighed in with wine blogosphere predictions, analysis, and reflections.  In the last month, Steve Heimoff, Tom Wark, and Alder Yarrow posted their opinions on the evolution of the wine blogosphere, sustainable wine content creation, and/or why they blog.  I regularly follow these guys because they write with authentically developed voices.  I can’t always relate to all their points of view, but the content is usually entertaining.

Heimoff heralded and pivoted off a recent Jason Calacanis claim that “blogging is dead and stupid people shouldn’t write”.  Heimoff suggested, as indirectly and gently as his style allows, that topical expertise is required to blog about wine and the new Web 3.0 environment will filter out marginal wine content creators and “sharpen the research and writing abilities of the bloggers who remain, making the wine blogosphere a more professional platform.”

Wark focused on “wine blog burnout” and that the “wine blog explosion was just that.”  Fewer launches are combining with increasing numbers of shuttered blogs to eventually consolidate authority with the remaining few “competent bloggers.”

Yarrow celebrated his blog’s eighth birthday (a formidable achievement) by looking back at the stages of the wine blogosphere’s development and how different classes of writers joined in over time.  He eloquently mapped the early lonesome days, all the way through a period where traditional wine journalists and critics started leveraging these new online publishing tools.

But Yarrow’s chronicle waxed personal; almost confessional.  He recalled starting Vinography to be more efficient with communications to friends seeking his wine opinions and also to figure out how blogs work.  He closed his post by genuinely admitting to continual blogging because “…some people knit, I write about wine. Sitting here in front of my blog is an aesthetic pursuit as much as it is anything else. I enjoy it infinitely more than watching television.”

Yarrow’s point of view resonates most; as if it came from a kindred spirit.  It helped me understand why Vinography content is so easy for me to appreciate.  Like Alder, I started my blog to more efficiently share wine perspectives with friends who always asked, and to immerse myself in web content creation so I could be a better leader for my content marketing and social media company, DigitalSherpa. Yarrow admits his ultimate pleasures come from the engagement that his content produces.  For me, wine blogging’s greatest rewards are the virtual and real life connections with people who share my passion for wine.  It expanded my network, advanced my learning, and mostly connected me with people that I never would have had the chance to meet.

Yarrow’s confessions also helped me understand where Heimoff and Wark are probably coming from with their orientation for dominance and consolidated online authority.  I am guessing that unlike Yarrow, me, and hundreds of others…they blog to advance their professional standing in the wine trade and with consumers. That’s just instinctive conjecture, and I am sure that both guys also feel the same jollies that bloggers without professional agendas do.  They each seem bright and smart, one a wine PR professional and the other a wine journalist and critic.  Blogging enables expanded professional postures and business outcomes.  It develops authority around regular remarkable content and pays large professional dividends.  My company does this for thousands of businesses; I know it to work just that way.

It’s no wonder that Wark and Yarrow track how bad bloggers are weeded out, a narrowing playing field, and consolidating web dominance.  They make livings in the wine trade and I respect their focus in that regard. Yarrow stays glued to the keyboard because he’s hooked on the engagement and what it brings.  Different worlds, same blogosphere.

I never intended to create the world’s next great wine community at WineZag.  Nor did I ever have designs on WineZag becoming a center for wine criticism; a new media player in the world of wine media.  I do it for me, just like Yarrow chooses it over knitting and TV. While Yarrow has accomplished more than any blogger would aspire to, it apparently came as a byproduct of more humble goals.  It’s completely sensible that Steve and Tom talk about expertise, dominance, and authority.  The disconnect I have is blogging for me is about the experience, human connection, or, as Yarrow puts it, “aesthetic” pursuit that squelches any other priorities like “weeding out the stupid”, establishing dominance, or consolidating authority.

I suppose that human connection will continue to combine with easy web creation tools, like blogs, to support a robust blogging community for years to come; made up of enough writers who really don’t care about dominance at all.