Red Currants!

It takes FOREVER to pick a currant bush. The berries are so tiny. Only huckleberries are worse. It must be done in several efforts, or else you just might go crazy ;) . I can do it for maybe 30 minutes, but then I have to quit, and come back later. Currant bushes, in this cool, wet, late Spring, are loaded this year: I've picked 3 pints from the one bush and there are still more berries out there. These I freeze, then add later to the Epona Rose wine (where, admittedly, they make only a tiny statement LOL - we're talking about maybe 1 lb of currants and hundreds of pounds of grapes). Currants are acidic and delightful.

Montague 2014 Columbia Valley WA Red Wine - Yuck!

I can't recall how I came by this bottle. My notes say it is about a $20 bottle. At four years old, it should have been pretty good tonight. But out of the bottle, it was instantly and irretrievably flawed! The most awful stink of (I'm guessing:) cork taint! It could have been some other volatile flaw. It really stank. I waited and waited, to see if it would blow off, and it finally did mitigate somewhat, but who wants to wait thirty minutes before they can drink a wine they just opened for dinner?

What a shame. This wine had some nice and fresh dark fruits. But every time I poured some more, it was full of that flaw again.

Maybe the winemaker didn't have a clue. Some problems develop in-bottle. But this is a horrible mark on that winery, whoever they are. You just can't sell wines like this. I hope I don't!

Cellar Tracker reviewers like this one, but the latest post was 1.5 years ago. Maybe it needed to be drunk in just 3 years, but that would be odd for this region and wine type.

 This winery doesn't have a website! This suggests the wine was made for a distributor, by a winemaker who usually works at a publicized winery. Maybe the distributor bought some bad wine cheap and hoped they could market it. Oh, well.

The Top Fifty Red Winegrapes

A new "Coffee Table Book"  is out, on the 50 most-important red winegrapes, and one of the lauded grapes is a modern variety (Baco Noir)! It's not my personal favorite--there are so many good modern grape varieties now--but it is a huge step in the right direction.

Saying that you like wine, but also believing there are no good modern varieties of winegrapes, is like saying you are an expert on cars but you haven't heard of the Chevrolet Corvette or the Toyota Camry.

Red Wine: The Comprehensive Guide to the 50 Essential Varieties & Styles

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Wine-Comprehensive-Essential-Varieties/dp/1454918233/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1514740842&sr=1-1&keywords=red+wine

I agree that the conventional wisdom is slowly changing, as it always must, in the face of new truth. Drat that it changes so slowly. But drip drip drip goes the water, falliing fruitlessly upon the giant rock of ignorance, and one day we marvel that the rock is gone.

One thing you can do with red currants

I saved a red currant bush, by moving it, when we burned down the derelict cabin at our farm (that was a training exercise for the local fire department; pretty cool). The bush rewards us by giving a small crop of very tart red currants every year. So, what to do with them? This year, this was my solution:

What you see there, sauteeing in olive oil, is the currants with minced onion, garlic and yellow mild peppers, with fresh oregano from our garden, and some vinegar and sugar. It cooked down into a wonderful topping for tilapia over brown rice. Enjoyed with one of the great rose wines I've sold this Spring.