The Mission
We will provide an excellent bottle or two. You drink them. Simple. Knowledge is power!

The goal of our wine club is to introduce you to new varietals, new styles, new regions and new tastes. As with all of our wines, our club focus is on value, finding the best quality wine that we can for the price. Experiment. Take risks. Enjoy!
 

September “Drink wine and you will sleep well.  Sleep and you will not sin.  Avoid sin and you will be saved.  Ergo, drink wine and be saved.” -Medieval German Saying

The Wine

Tier One: 2007 Londer Vineyards Anderson Valley Gewurztraminer.  Suggested retail price: $25.00.  Pour House price: $23.99  Your price: $21.60.

Tier Two:  2005 Huber Estate Grown Santa Rita Hills Santa Barbara County Dornfelder.  Suggested retail price: $23.00.  Pour House price: $20.99.  Your price:  $18.90.

Fall may not be here quite yet, but we can feel her coming, the perfect explanation for our wine club theme this month:  German varietals living in California.  We’re ready to welcome the cooler weather but haven’t quite had our fill of the carefree summer, so we are going to combine the cool weather feel of German grapes with the sunny Cali climate.

When most people think of German wines, they first think white (accurate) and then think sweet (not so accurate).  The tier one wine this month is a German varietal that I always associate with fall, even though it’s a white, specifically, Gewurztraminer.  First of all, it’s fun to say and has a sort of back to school feel to it- Wow honey, you learned a new word!  Hard G, the w sounds like a v and the rest is just like it looks – Guh-VURTS-trah-mee-ner.  Secondly, Gewurztraminers are usually a very pretty, rich golden or peachy color.  This is because the grapes themselves are a little pink (sometimes golden), the very colors of fall.  And finally, they smell and taste fall-ish to me, spicy, perfumed, and crisp, just like the apples showing up at the farmers market.  The very word gewurtz  means “spiced” in German.

Our Gewurz is from Anderson Valley, one of the cooler growing regions of California which is how it maintains the crisp acidity that makes the wine work.  Too much heat equals too much ripeness and sugar, and a flabby, sweet result.  This wine is neither flabby nor sweet, but bracing and truly SPICY.  It smells unmistakably Gewurztraminer, of roses and grapefruit and something that comes to me as patchouli or sandalwood…Take a taste:  limes, cloves… guava?  Swallow.  Wait.  Wait.  Wait for it…now.  Bam!  Cayenne pepper!  How neat is that?  This is a fairly powerful wine that will pair well with simple, not too delicate foods.  A fruit nut and cheese plate will do nicely.  Enjoy the 2007 Londer Vineyards Anderson Valley Dry Gewurztraminer!

Germany does produce a fair amount of red wines, most of which are snapped up in country – the Germans are justly proud to produce any red wine at all in their, shall we say challenging, climate.  One of the less well known of these grapes is Dornfelder - although not many non-Germans are all that familiar with even the most common German red, Spatburgunder (aka, Pinot Noir) – it’s all relative.  Back to Dornfelder, a hybrid specifically bred in 1955 from two other unpronounceable hybrids, Helfensteiner and Heroldrebe, themselves born from Fruhaburgunder and Trollinger, Portugieser and Limberger.  Whew!  Had enough German grape genealogy?  Me too.  But the result of all this crossing is exactly what a German vineyard needs, a grape that ripens early and produces a lot of fruit with dark, dense juice.  Yay!

What does it taste like anyway? Typically Dornfelder is a friendly, fruity, easy to drink red, kind of like the Zinfandel of Germany.  I’ve read several comparisons to Beaujolais as well.  When you have a Dornfelder from the Santa Rita Hills, you get the same grapey, berry spice characteristics.  The Santa Rita Hills are a fairly cool region, as you might have guessed from all the Pinot coming out of there and it expresses this cool climate grape quite well.  The 2005 Huber Estate Grown Santa Rita Hills Santa Barbara County Dornfelder is an excellent example of a domestic Dornfelder.  Drink it with the cured meats, the ham and dry cured salami, on the fruit and cheese platter you set out earlier to pair with the Gewurztraminer.

There you have it, wines for a Sunday in September.  Both of our wines this month have a bit of the hedonistic pleasure thing going on.  It happens to the best of us when we move to California, even to the Germans!

The Rules
Our wine club has two tiers:

• Tier One - one wine per month, for $25.00 or less

• Tier Two - two wines per month, for 40.00 or less.

We choose the wine, you enjoy it. Your wine will be available at the Pour House on the first of the month. You can pick it up any day.

Monthly price will vary with the wine and will be charged to your credit card on the first of the month. Wine Club price is 10% off of the shelf price.

You must join for a minimum of three months. We will automatically renew your membership at the end of three months if not informed otherwise (you have to tell us to stop buying you wine if you want out).

There is no membership fee. Stop by the Pour House with the credit card you want to use. We will charge your card monthly, on the first. I think that covers it.

Call, fax or email us if you have any further questions. 10075 Jibboom St. Phone (530) 550 9664 Fax (530) 550 9692

Dean@thepourhousetruckee.com
Christa@thepourhousetruckee.com