@lichme I see what you did there.

@yakkoTDI
That stuff’s fizzier but lacking something - like actual wine. That can be an advantage.

@lljk Mead maker here. Thanks for the heads up.

@werehatrack it’s dry. Probably fruity, but definitely dry.

@werehatrack It’s not going to be a sweet wine at all, it’s a dry table wine, not dessert wine. Based on the alcohol content it’s from very ripe grapes, so it should be pleasantly fruity…

@werehatrack Maybe someone active on Casemates would know - @pmarin, looking at the acidity and Ph of this wine, could you please tell us how sweet or not sweet you think it is?

@werehatrack I know what you mean. I’m not that serious into wines. All I know is I like something kinda sweet like a Zinfadel and so my friends. That said one year I fell for a deal here on some kinda pink wine that I “assumed” would be sweet. I bought a case hoping too impress my girlfriends on one of our girl get togethers. Thank God, I tried a bottle beforehand. That wine was so dry, tart and nasty I was ashamed to even leave it for them to spot it. So without some kind of flavor recommendation I’ve been passing on the temptation to buy online.

@Kyeh @pmarin @werehatrack

It will be dry. Doubt it will be too fruity. Pedroncelli is one of the bedrock Autobuys on Casemates.

@Kyeh @pmarin @werehatrack

From the tasting notes:

“Tasting Notes: From the fruit forward aromas to the lingering flavors, Sonoma Classico blends the characteristics of each grape seamlessly: ripe dark berries with floral and toasty notes in the nose and cherry and plum flavors. A medium bodied blend, there is an underlying structure of rounded tannins bringing balance along with a pleasant and fruit forward finish.”

From @Aracos reply to @klezman. Link in reply to tasting notes.

@Aracos @klezman @MarkDaSpark @pmarin @werehatrack Thanks, but for someone who’s not seriously into wine I don’t really know how that translates into “sour/bitter/sweet” or what.

@Aracos @klezman @Kyeh @pmarin @werehatrack

Not sweet. Medium tannins means it will be dry, but not too dry. Tannins are the “pucker factor”, more tannins can make a wine need more decanting (i.e., letting it “breathe” more) before drinking it.

Most White wines don’t have a lot or any tannins. Reds will vary, with bigger reds (Cabs, Petite Sirah, Tannat, etc ) having more tannins. Some is due to the amount of time with oak, whether in barrel or using other methods.

With medium tannins, it might need some time to breathe, depending on your preferences, but not a lot. (You can open the bottle an hour before serving.

@Aracos @klezman @MarkDaSpark @pmarin @werehatrack
Thank you!

@Enigma @werehatrack

This is not your mom’s White Zinfandel! Not all “pink” (aka Rosé) wines are sweet.

Sometimes you have to look at the RS to tell whether it’s dry or sweet.

Even Sparkling Wines vary on sweetness!

@Enigma @MarkDaSpark @werehatrack
So why do the wine cognoscenti look down on sweet wines so much?

Yes, thank you that was quite helpful.
@Aracos @klezman @Kyeh @MarkDaSpark @pmarin @werehatrack

Yes indeed, I found out the hard way. Like I said I’m not seriously into wines like that. I see a nice description on a bottle and go for it. I wasn’t even aware of an RS or tannin until I saw it in your previous reply. I do know one thing though, tonight I’m staying in my lane and passing on this offering. @MarkDaSpark @werehatrack

@werehatrack, No, but check out the Varietals; that should give you some idea what you can expect. I kinda think it is semi-sweet ''cause the sweet Zinfandel will be offset by the Merlot somewhat. Of course, as with mucho assumptions, I may be wrong,…Again!!

@1DisabledWarVet @werehatrack While a white zinfandel is a blush wine made to be sweet, is a mistake to assume the inclusion of the zinfandel grape means there will be some sweetness. If i buy a zinfandel wine (not white zinfandel) I’m not going to expect sweetness.

@werehatrack This is going to be a dry wine. Dry as in not sweet. For many Americans, who did not grow up with wine, unlike Europeans, there is often an aversion to the acidity as well as the tannin levels in red wines.

You may have noticed that your tastes have changed as you have aged. Maybe your palate has broadened to appreciate aromas, savory notes, and mouth feel, on balance, more than the fruity, sweet, or sugary preferences of youth. Add to the fact that like fats, alcohol can be a flavor carrier as well, and one can learn to appreciate the nuances of wines.

For many, wine may be an acquired taste, with sweet wines and social drinking of the same being sort of a gateway into wine for some. This may eventually lead to an appreciation of the finer points of wine. YMMV.

In the process of learning, one may be able develop both the ability to detect differences and nuances between various types of wine and within vintages of the same type as well as the vocabulary to describe what one senses. Words like cassis, hay, grassy, violet, melon, raisin, cedar, oak, green apple, cinnamon, and many, many more.

Me? I’ve quaffed** my share of wine over the years, but I don’t have the organoleptic sensitivities enough to make fine aroma and taste distinctions. So I leave the flowery language and all the wine-snob terms to others. OTH, I know what I like.

Here’s what one wine blogger has to say about some of these issues:

*Is Wine an Acquired Taste?
Steve Heimoff
By Steve Heimoff on August 21st, 2014
in: Wine Education, Beginner

I recently read a post in the online Financial Times (the British publication) by a well-known wine writer. He wrote: “Newcomers to wine often describe their first impressions of its taste as ‘vinegary’ and ‘sour’. My younger brother and I agreed, having tentatively sipped champagne in our early teens, that its taste was similar to that left in our mouths after we’d vomited.”

This is why, the writer continued, “Beginners often prefer sweet wine.” A dry wine’s acidity (natural or added), which is one of its fundamental components, is simply too much for some new drinkers.

I myself never liked wine when I was young. The only wine my household ever saw was Manischewitz, a sugary-sweet red wine we drank at Jewish holidays, like Passover. I loathed it, and it turned me off to wine until I was an adult.
I know a lot of people under 25 or 30, and a lot of them don’t like wine. It’s not because they don’t like alcohol in general, because they do like beer and cocktails. There’s just something about wine they don’t relish. So it makes me wonder: Is wine an acquired taste?

In this country, of course, we have no tradition at all of giving little children wine. It’s not only illegal, it’s morally frowned upon by a segment of the population. In European wine-drinking countries like France, Italy and Spain, tradition has long held that offering children wine almost from birth helps them appreciate wine’s proper place in the household and in life. European parents were said to give baby a pinky dipped in wine. After that, the child got one teaspoon of wine, in a glass of water, for each additional year of life, until at age 12 or so, he or she was consuming a glass with the meal.
So for European children, you can’t really say wine is an acquired taste, if they’ve been drinking it since they were born! On the other hand, if somebody never had wine in their entire life until they were of legal drinking age, then they might find it sour and unpleasant. Don’t forget, we’re a nation that’s addicted to sugar. Kids grow up drinking Big Gulps, soda, frappuccinos and things like that, so when they taste a wine that’s not only high in acidity, but also entirely dry (where all the grape sugar has been fermented into alcohol), it’s not hard to see why they might wince at the taste.

Wikipedia says an acquired taste is “an appreciation for a food or beverage that is unlikely to be enjoyed by a person who has not had substantial exposure to it.” I’ve always loved food, but the one food I had to acquire a taste for was mustard. Now, I love the stuff. Whenever I have a friend who says he doesn’t like wine, I try to offer him a sip of something fantastic, especially with food. I figure that anyone in their senses will love wine, if only they’re exposed to it enough, and have someone enthusiastic nearby, who can excite them about it.

Steve Heimoff is one of America’s most respected and well-known wine writers. The former West Coast Editor for Wine Enthusiast Magazine and a contributor to Wine Spectator, he has also authored two books on the subject of California wine, including “New Classic Winemakers of California: Conversations with Steve Heimoff,” published in the fall of 2007.*

In the end, you will probably like what you like at any given moment, which may shift as your palate becomes more educated.

If this wine is not for you, then I wouldn’t shed a moment of regret over passing on this one and clicking the Meh button instead. Save your regrets for the IRKs.

** Quaff: “It’s a lot like drinking, except you spill more.” - Terry Pratchett

@Enigma @Kyeh @MarkDaSpark @werehatrack

So why do the wine cognoscenti look down on sweet wines so much?

Important question. Wineaux (winos?) like a wide variety of wines with many different characteristics, including sweetness (i.e. residual sugar aka RS). In fact, some of the most famous wines in the world are sweet wines - like Port, Sauternes, ice wine, and Tokaji. Those wines tend to have RS numbers in the 5% up to 30% range. They also tend to have very high acidity (and relatively low pH) so that they still taste fresh and not like syrup. That’s why a mouthful of Aunt Jemima doesn’t leave you wanting more but a very sweet lemonade still does. The best sweet wines still taste fresh and lively, not syrupy, even with 25% sugar.

Table wines (the category we think of when we just say “wine”) don’t tend to be truly sweet, although some are considered “off-dry” like some German Rieslings. Most table wine has residual sugar below 0.5%. For reference, most people can perceive sugar as “sweetness” somewhere between 0.4-0.8%. Some widely distributed wines (e.g. Prisoner, Menage a Trois, most of the sub-$8/bottle retail stuff) have RS numbers just edging into the 0.5-0.6% range, leaving them tasting just a touch less dry, especially if they are low acidity wines. (Acidity affects our perception of sweetness.) But at the end of the day, the vast majority of wine is considered “dry” (that being the opposite of sweet).

RS numbers below the “sweetness” perception threshold tend to still affect the perception of wine has having more body and possibly taking the edge off the acidity. This is why “dry” Champagne is actually pretty sweet, and “brut” bubbly has even less sugar but tastes rather dry, but the added sugar changes how the wine feels in your mouth.

The terminology problem comes in when people try to describe wine aromas and flavours. Many (most?) people tend to use “sweet” to describe aromas and flavours of fruit because, well, fruit - at least the tastiest fruit - is sweet. It’s a really unfortunate issue that creates a communication problem. Fruity != sweet, but fruity can trick us into thinking there are “sweet” aspects to a wine. Along those same lines, other features of the wine, like the amount of glycerol, can affect mouthfeel and sweetness. Furthermore, higher alcohol wines tend to help the fruity aromas get into the air more easily, making the wine smell more fruity, which is easily mistaken for sweet.

As for why the cognoscenti don’t like “sweet” wine, the answer again lies in perception. Wine with residual sugar don’t really go well with food, unless it’s a dessert wine that can go well with sweeter foods. (One notable exception is the traditional pairing of Sauternes with foie gras since the acidity of Sauternes cuts the fat of foie gras nicely.) Wines, especially red wines, that have enough residual sugar to come across as off-dry but not enough to be a dessert wine tend to taste muddled and uninteresting, even if they are enjoyable or even gluggable. Most who’d qualify as “wine cognoscenti” are looking for interesting wines that speak of the grape, the place they’re grown, and the vintage, and so the bit of sugar can muddle it all. There’s also a sense, right or wrong, that these sweeter “dry” wines are more manipulated and of lower quality. No comment from me on that one.

So back to this wine - guaranteed it’s dry in the technical sense of “has less than 0.4% residual sugar”. The only red table wine Pedroncelli makes that might get over that line is the friends.red. This wine is, however, likely to be moderately to very fruity, which can easily come across as “sweet” due to the confusing nature of the dry-sweet axis vs the fruity qualities of a wine.

Hope that helps.

@Jackinga @werehatrack @klezman
Excellent posts!

@Jackinga @klezman @rjquillin @werehatrack
Yes, THANK YOU for the wonderful, thoughtful explanations. I do like port and Reisling, and I’ve had non-sweet wines that I thought were wonderful; once in France I had something red that made me think of burgundy velvet, it was so lush … but I do find a lot of wines too tannic or acidic.

@1DisabledWarVet @craigthom @werehatrack

Exactly! Zinfandel is not a sweet wine, but our perception can make some wines seem sweeter than they really are.

Even as long as I have been drinking wine, I still love sweeter wines like Port and Sauternes. But not most Ice Wines, since most seem too syrupy to me. But what matters is what wines you like, not what someone else sneers at.

@Jackinga GREAT POST!!!

@Enigma @klezman @Kyeh @MarkDaSpark @werehatrack Nicely worded, GREAT POST!!

@hchavers

@klezman Seems to match up with the 2019 Sonoma Classico. https://store.pedroncelli.com/Catalog/PRT_SRP192_PARTTECHSHEET_20210630_113403.PDF

I missed last year, so time to order early this year.

@IndifferentDude definitely 750

@zachdecker Sorry, this deal contains 2 unique items and I’m not sure which one you want. You can review how to pick one, or just try ordering from the checkout page.

@zachdecker Sorry, this deal contains 2 unique items and I’m not sure which one you want. You can review how to pick one, or just try ordering from the checkout page.

@mediocrebot Oh well, I tried.

@mike808

Mr. Hankey!
Dang it, you edited it !

@MarkDaSpark Yeah. I wasn’t feeling all in and then the next ones all sucked worse.

@mike808

ROFLMAO!

@mike808 same! I love Pedroncelli!

@MarkDaSpark You got some of that Wellington port, no doubt.

@mike808. Yup! To go with the other Wellington ports.

@MarkDaSpark Can’t argue with Wellington, Scott Harvey and Pedroncelli, but my fourth has gotta be Twisted Oak.
C’est la vin!

@Foobarski @MarkDaSpark
Shout out to my table wine go to, Ty Caton. Plus all of those too. I just wish there was more of the “Don Spil Le Black” merlot. Damn, it was @#$&!?* good, to steal from Twisted Oak. C’est la zin!

WORKER BEES! HERCULES! TURKEY GREASE! AWESOME!

@Cochise22
If you still have some, it will be even better this year. Pedroncelli is like that. Young at release, but improves for years.

@Cochise22 @rjquillin I still have a couple bottles from last year with no plans to use them anytime soon.

I know shit about wine tho…is there a point I should use them by?

@Cochise22 @PHRoG
here’s the link from the offer last year. Only one comment so far, but from a trusted palate over on CM.

The quick quip reply would be ‘when they no longer taste good to you’.

Some (most?) “commercial” wines are designed for consumption at release, but all will age, and depending how they are stored, at varied rates. Some can easily take over a decade (or more) to reach maturity; most not, and are best within a few years.
This Pedroncelli offer will well reward decent storage, and based on past experiences of at least a year and easily for five.

@mike808 Saved me at least a few hangovers, did me a favor! I haven’t bought anything in over a year…Unless something really good comes along I’ll be counting that extra $5 a month laughing all the way to the bank

@Foobarski
For those that dont know, this is a link to a site where other wineau post their notes on bottles.

@jeffcohen Wow, that’s quick. Looking at last year’s comments, sellout happened early afternoon (Eastern time). There was a pause for VMPs, but only with 6-packs.

@jeffcohen - We we’re able to add a small amount of additional 6-packs, and they should be available now (until they’re not).

@BPL5683 Appreciate that, but I was fast asleep and now they’re gone again. I’ll survive!

I wanted to see my order gif.
/giphy candied-sharing-punch

Wow, that didn’t disappoint!

@ACraigL
She looks like she’s swearing!

Last year’s cheers from over here is drinking nicely this year. The extra year did well for it.

@knotworking could not have said it better myself!

@chienfou I got a case. So I definitely can wtleg you some. Even have some cheer from over here I can share too. I can look into stopping in Montgomery the weekend before Christmas.

@mike808
thanks… that’s very kind… unfortunately we will be out of town for the holidays from 12/17 to 12/26. Maybe some day we will crawl into the 21st century…

@chienfou It is wine. So it will keep. I can change the labels to “Cheer from last year”, lol.

@Mommykins You want to store the extra. (as if!).

This is Pedroncelli. It gets better with age.

@mike808 @Mommykins I needed the half-case also. Because I might be away at the arrival dates, I send to a volunteer wine acceptor friend’s house. But the guy that has to carry the delivery complained that a full case weighs too much!

@mike808 @Mommykins @pmarin Suggest that he drain a bottle or two to lighten the load.

['Tis easier to carry the wine in your belly rather than in your hand].

Well, I missed the six packs so it looks like I’m in for a case. Resolved: Drink one bottle per month til next year’s offer rolls around.

/giphy bedecked-quilted-donner

@rpstrong

Resolved: Drink one bottle per month til next year’s offer rolls around.

/giphy All in favor, say Aye

@InFrom @rpstrong Or, hear me out, drink one bottle a day until the guests leave. Amirite?!

@GrandmaLyn @InFrom Guests??

@Mommykins sixers were back up this morning.

@SaintO This puts me on a holiday mood

@craigthom wait what’s the answer? I can’t find a list of places they can or cannot ship to

@thechilipepper0 I didn’t order because I didn’t want a case.

However, casemates lists the states, and Kentucky ain’t one.

@edsa Same winery, newer vintage, same component wines. Should be very similar.

@Bumplepimp Grab yer spork and dig in!

@DebRVA fantastic giphy!

@sillyheathen Appropriate giphy!

@Kyeh I thought so too!! Loved this one!

@homersmrt you got it working…

@mike808 Estimated delivery in the mediocrebot post is today through Monday next week, and IIRC wines are shipped with two-day delivery, so I bet they’ll all go out within a couple of days.

@steelersluver Mine is the same way but it should be on the train to Chicago (I’m not sure where you are but that is how the wine ships to me in MI). I expect it will land tonight sometime and get an update. UPS says expected delivery tomorrow.

@a5meiser I’m in the Pittsburgh area. The other wine I ordered came in a couple of days. No delivery day update on UPS, and I’m trying to arrange to be home!

@Cloudscout just saw that. I’m screwed if it doesn’t get here by Monday.

@jaybird Well, this is clearly some kind of Christmas miracle. They’ll probably make a holiday special about it one day!