El Bloggo Torcido - Twisted Oak Winery

Adventures Indeed in Wine Packaging

Was reading some of the comments to this post over on Dr. Vino on a new single serving package, with stem:

http://www.drvino.com/2010/06/15/le-froglet-single-wine-plastic-glass/

You gotta at least love the name! (C'mon!)

But I was thinking (dangerous I know), there could be a market for wine in a juice box with an air-permeable curly straw to "decant" the wine as you sip. Someone should get on this.

Of course, then Riedel would have to produce a whole line of hand-blown curly straws, where the curves are matched to the varietal wine. Bigger curves for Cab, smaller curves for Pinot, more loops for Gewurztraminer. You get the gist.

Someone should definitely get on this.

(Take Your Rubber Chicken Out of the Closet! Rules here!)

Posted via email from twisted oak winery

Review SPAM!

No, this is not a call to send me your opinions about fine spiced pork products from Minnesota. I noticed the other day that we had already captured our first "product review spam" on our new web site.

This is pretty amazing to me considering we are one of the very few winery web sites that offer this feature, and we've only had it for a few weeks!

I have of course removed the spammy review, but you can click on the image below to see it in all it's glory.

And by the way, if you do have a non-spammy review of our newly-released 2008 Verdelho or any other Twisted Oak wines, you should visit twistedoak.com and share it with us!

Wine P*rn and P*rn Wine?

I just spent three days at the Wine Bloggers Conference with a whole bunch of truly interesting people who share a passion for wine and for writing about wine in a blog format. It has inspired me to blog here again!

Soooo.... In the news today is a piece (pun not intended) about a porn star who is making wine, apparently pretty good wine according to Parker. I'm not sure why this is news now (they announced this a couple years ago) but it popped up today and so I am reporting it to you. And...

Soooo.... Also in the news today we get word that the great State of Alabama has decided to ban the Cycles Gladiator wine for having a label that is pornographic. (That's the label up there to the right.)

Soooo.... We'd like to be one of the first to congratulate our good friends at Hahn Family Wines for achieving this grand distinction! We can only hope this is a harbinger of more high-profile wine-bannings, perhaps even our own signature *%#&@! Red Rhone-style blend. (That's the label there to the left.)

Soooo.... I couldn't help but notice that, on this otherwise ordinary Monday, we have a porn queen declared to be a wine maker, and a wine queen declared to be porn. Will wonderments ever cease?

We Got Names!

The Queen has made her decision and the names are... On the left is "Inigo Montoya" (aka The Spaniard from The Princess Bride) (but you knew that!). And on the right is "The Stig" (named after the "tame racing driver" from the BBC show Top Gear) (OK, you might not have known that.)

Thanks everyone for your great suggestions!

Name My Pussy (Two Pussies, Actually)

While not quite the attraction that rubber chickens can be, pussies do make occasional appearances on this blog and also at twistedoak.com.... Anyway, check out this photo(*1):

Long-time Twisted Tasting Room Staff member Serena(*2) had some kittens to find homes for and she brought them by the house yesterday. The Queen (aka Mrs. El Jefe) wanted two of them and (since we already have two cats and a dog(*3)) I put my foot down and said absolutely not!

Needless to say we now have two 12-week old male kittens.

The kittens still do not have names, and since we are having brain freeze on the matter we(*4) thought we would seek outside help - namely you. If you have any name suggestions for either of these two furry bundles of joy(*5) please post them in the comments below. Cheers!

Notes:

(*1): More pictures are posted here on Facebook. (Also please take a moment while you are there to join the Twisted Oak Winery Fan Page!)

(*2): Actually, Serena has been with Twisted Oak since the very beginning, which is especially appropriate since we celebrate our 6th anniversary this weekend!

(*3): Do not think for a moment that Miss Nacha is put out by having new kittens in the house. She gets all maternal around kittens. In fact we're pretty sure she thinks she is a cat herself.

(*4): This blog post was actually The Queen's idea. Go figure.

(*5): That one on the right just crapped on my copy of Gary Vaynerchuck's 101 Wines! Little *%#&@! No, I will not post a photo!

Owning Google Suggest

Over on the Winery Web Site Report blog, Mike Duffy writes about Google Suggest. Mike also decided to explore some food and wine pairing suggestions.

Needless to say this prompted me to attempt the obvious pairing to see if Google suggested it and to see what were the top search results. 943,000 results, and most were involved with Twisted Oak and our infamous bouncy bantams.

But that's not enough. I want to own the Google Suggest results. In fact, I want to pwn the Google Suggest results! All your suggests are belong to us!!

If you would like to support this vaguely worthy cause, please add the phrase "what wine goes with rubber chicken" someplace on your web sites with a link back to this blog post. And if you do, please let me know via a comment below and/or a trackback. Let's get this soon-to-be classic food and wine pairing on the map!

And by the way, if you are searching for wine-related stuff, you shouldn't be googling - you should be Ablegraping! If you haven't yet checked out ablegrape.com, you should!

A Really Twisted Job!

So much going on over here at El Rancho Torcido that it has become too easy to forget to blog anymore! We'll be remedying that starting now....

It may or may not have come to your attention that competitions for high-paying jobs as a social media specialist have become all the rage. First it was Tourism Queensland (Australia) with their "Best Job in the World" competition, and now it has spilled into the wine world with Murphy-Goode Winery (not of Murphys, CA) (what's that about anyway?) and "A Really Goode Job." 

As I write this there are 94 applicants for the aforementioned Goode Job. (You know, it's not every day you get to use "aforementioned" in a sentence.) That means there will be at least 93 applicants left without a gig. This tremendous waste of human talent must be avoided at all costs.

We're not a big winery like Murphy-Goode, so we can't offer quite the same perks - but we can offer:

• a generous wine allowance;
• an equally generous rubber chicken and clothing allowance;
• a personal camp site on the grounds at Twisted Oak Winery in Vallecito, that includes 24/7 access to indoor plumbing (including a real commercial-grade flush toilet), and access to the winery shower (during normal business hours);
• all the rural WiFi you can eat at 768Kbps;
• free admission to all winery events (this alone is worth scads. and even oodles.)
• and $1.98 of my personal pocket change (includes high-grade pocket lint as a bonus!)

For this unique and generous compensation package, all you have to do is experience the Twisted Wine Life^tm and tell people about it. Note that you need to be at least 21 years old and be able to communicate your way out of a paper bag. Knowledge of HTML, poker, and rubber chicken wrangling would help too.

Interested? Email tastingroom@twistedoak.com!

Update: Even with the way they say the economy is going, I didn't think $1.98 and a rubber chicken was going to generate so much interest (though camping at the winery is pretty cool!) So, here's the deal:

• Via your choice of social media (video, audio, Facebook, twitter, whatever) create something that tells us what Twisted Oak means to you.
• Your presentation will be judged by its content, by the effective use of the chosen media, and by its originality. It goes without saying that it should also be funny!
• When it's ready, you can email us a link to your entry- or better yet, for extra credit - let us discover it on our own! (We got mad search skillz.)
• By the way, the duration of this gig is as long as we both can stand it (as if anything else would make sense!)

I think a deadline of June 8th, 2009 is reasonable. Go for it!

(Euphoric photo of rubber chickens by Lynn Hirth, 2009 Take Your Rubber Chicken To Work Week finalista.)

A New Varietal Grows in the Sierra Foothills!

Wednesday we are releasing a new wine, made with a varietal that we believe has not been cultivated in the New World, at least not here in California. This varietal is the extremely rare Poulet Caoutchouc, which is found only in the foothills of the Ardennes forest in France. Fortunately here in Calaveras County, we have similar forests and hills, and this variety has taken root - and indeed, flourished!

This wine is 100% Poulet Caoutchouc. Our Twisted winemaker Fermento (the Magnificent) describes this wine as having the classic varietal character, "This varietal shows strong earthy aromas and a different sort of sweetness on the front, moving to a sort of sharp astringency in the mid-palate. The mouthfeel is very chewy, and the flavors stay with you for a long time. A very, very long time."

All Twisted Oak wines are well known for pairing very well with rubber chicken; the Poulet Caoutchouc may actually be our most perfect pairing to date. Production on this wine is very limited, so you'll want to grab yours before it's gone!

(And be sure to mark your calendar for the evening of May 2nd when we will be holding our first ever Rubber Chicken Roast at the Twisted Oak Winery in Vallecito. This event benefits the Rubber Chicken National Forest and the Calaveras Big Trees Park. Tickets are $35 and include BBQ roasted chicken, wine, and all the fixins - and are available in advance from the winery at 209-736-9080x10. No foolin'!)

(photo by Farley Walker, 2008 Take Your Rubber Chicken to Work Week finalist)

Announcing WBW #53: Wine for Breakfast!

El Bloggo Torcido and Twisted Oak Winery are pleased to be the host for Wine Blogging Wednesday** (AKA WBW) for January 2009! The theme we have chosen is Wine for Breakfast.

Now - you don't necessarily have to actually consume wine before 10AM to participate - though it is certainly not discouraged. If you are like me (actually, no one is like me) (just saying) once in a while you like have to have breakfast for dinner. In fact, for me some breakfast foods are my favorite comfort foods.

So, what we are doing is pairing wine with traditional breakfast foods. For many of us that means bacon and eggs, pancakes, waffles, etc. But if your culture enjoys fermented fish for breakfast, go for it!

For the wine, choose anything you want, as long as it is a dry red or white wine. This means no sparkling wine, no rosés, no dessert wine, and no mixing with anything - i.e. no wine cocktails. The idea is to get outside of the "Sunday Brunch" mentality. Mimosa would be too easy, right? Dare to try something different - you might even find a surprise pairing for Spam Egg Sausage and Spam!

This Wine Blogging Wednesday takes place on Wednesday (oddly enough) January 14th, which should give you plenty of time to plan an eggceptional wine pairing!

For Fun: As a warm up, tell me below in the comments - What is the weirdest thing you have ever eaten (or drank) for breakfast?

**Wine Blogging Wednesday is a monthly event where participants choose a wine based on a monthly theme and then write a post about their experience. I'll post more details about how to participate when we get close to the 14th.

Shocking Developments

This time of year you'll see all sorts of gift guides, including wine gadget gift guides. Seems like there are a whole bunch of gadgets out these days that propose to make your wine taste like it has had years of aging, or to instantly decant the wine.

I apologize in advance for the fact that this little missive on my part is late in the gift purchasing cycle, but it was prompted by an email I received from Arthur of winesooth, pointing me to this article in the Telegraph (UK). The article describes a new system being developed in China which claims that, by applying electric fields, they can make a wine taste like it has been aged 20 years.

It's been eons since I took chemistry classes, but among the little I do recall is that chemical reactions either release energy or require energy to occur (exothermic and endothermic, right? I amaze myself sometimes...) Anyway, under normal cellar conditions (ie.e, not warm) it may be that there is a lower level of energy that allows some reactions to occur, while other do not have the energy available to occur. And it may very well be that those higher energy reactions are undesirable. (If you want proof, leave your age-worthy bottle out in the summer sun for a week. Ew.)

So, instead of excessive heat (which I think we can agree is bad) we have an electric field applied. This electricity may be less energetic than raw heat, we could suppose. Still, it is no less random and you could easily imagine good and bad reactions occurring. So, like every other "get aged quick" scheme I have ever seen, it is certainly true that good reactions can be happening. But do all of the good reactions that can happen with real aging occur? And what bad reactions also happen? Certainly the wine can taste different, sometimes maybe even better - but will it taste as good as it will 20 years from now? Hop in your time machine to find out - but I have my doubts...

I rather enjoy popping open a nice bottle and letting it open up and develop in my glass over the course of an evening. And I also enjoy pulling an older bottle out of my "cellar" to enjoy what it has become. It seems to me that expensive aerating gadgets and systems like this aren't at all necessary to enjoying a nice bottle wine. So next time you go shopping for a nice gift for your wine geek friends, give them wine instead. (Or how about a nice wine club membership?)

On the other hand, playing with high voltage is wicked cool!

(Remember to buy your raffle tickets for A Menu For Hope before December 24th!)