Archive for the ‘Homepage’ Category

Food and wine pairings … by mood?

Friday, March 5th, 2010

pairings_mood

The idea of “perfect” food and wine pairings can stress out even the most creative host or hostess.  Knowledge once considered holistic and the embodiment of regional, varietal, and tasting traits has been chopped into a succinct “do this for fish,” “that for chicken,” kind of logic served up to broad audiences.

That’s not the booquet approach to finding food and wine pairings you love, so we designed our own food and wine pairing tool now live in beta. (Check it out.)

The booquet pairing tool draws from a taxonomy of more than 800,000 bottles of wine and allows both simple and advanced filtering based on dish base, main ingredients, time of day and occasion. Another unique feature of our pairing tool is that it allows filtering by mood. (That’s right, wines create a mood…)

Seach by grounded, happy, cleansing, or relaxed and you’ll get dozens of results to empower you to make your own choices. Of course, you could do “eenie-meenie-miny-moe” from the long list of results, or you could do further research based on what people say about a wine, its price per bottle, or its availability locally. (All features on booquet.com.)

So, the next time you want to serve white wine and a grounded mood to friends, take a look at the bottles booquet says to consider (below), but make sure to enjoy your friends too!

Zenato Pinot Grigio Venezie Igt – Zenato – Pinot Grigio Italy 2008
Gnarly Head Pinot Grigio – Gnarly Head – Pinot Grigio Central Valley, United States 2007
Suavia Soave Classico Superiore – Suavia – Garganega Soave Classico, Italy 2007
Zolo Torrontes Gaucho Select – Zolo – Torrontes Mendoza, Argentina 2008
Fish Eye Pinot Grigio – Fish Eye Wines – Pinot Grigio California, USA 2008
Pride Mountain Vineyards Viognier – Pride Mountain Vineyards – Viognier Sonoma County, USA 2008
Chehalem Pinot Gris Willamette Valley – Chehalem – Pinot Gris Willamette Valley, USA 2007
East Dell Estates Pinot Grigio – East Dell Estates – Pinot Grigio Niagara Peninsula, Canada 2008
Dom Perignon Rose – Dom Perignon – Champagne Blend Champagne, France 1998
Fielding Estate Winery Pinot GrisFielding Estate Winery – Pinot Gris Niagara Peninsula, Canada 2008
Fish Eye Pinot Grigio – Fish Eye Wines – Pinot Grigio California, USA 2008
Chateau Olivier Blanc – Chateau Olivier – Semillon-Sauvignon Blanc Blend Graves, France 2006
Dom Perignon Brut – Moet & Chandon – Champagne Blend Champagne, France 1998
Trimbach Pinot Gris Reserve - Trimbach – Pinot Gris France 2007
Hermann j. Wiemer Gewurztraminer Dry – Hermann J. Wiemer – Gewurztraminer Finger Lakes, USA 2008
Zind-Humbrecht Pinot Gris Zind-Humbrecht – Pinot Gris Alsace, France 2004


Canadian wines for the 2010 Olympics

Friday, February 26th, 2010

ice_hockey_flags_small

While some want to know what cigars the Canadian ladies hockey team smoked after beating the U.S. for a gold medal last night, the Ontario Wine Diva is focused on introducing us to a few great Canadian wines instead. We’ve excerpted from her 15th tasting, held in honor of Day 15 of the Olympics:

… we raise a glass, in honour of our athletes, of Fielding Estate Winery 2008 Pinot Gris. When you read the description the winery provides on how this wine was made, it is intriguing to see the complexity and thought they put into making this wine. “Three vineyard plots from different sub-appellations (Vinemount Ridge, Niagara Lakeshore, Lincoln Lakeshore) were selected and harvested at different stages to help bring different flavour profiles to the final wine. The grapes were soaked on the skins for a short period before pressing and cold settling. Fermented cold using several yeast strains for three to four weeks, the wines were kept on light lees to help build richness in the final wine. A small portion of the final blend was fermented warm in a neutral French puncheon barrel to help add complexity and mouthfeel.”

… This wine is drinking perfectly now so it is definitely a wine to enjoy while watching the bronze or gold medal games for curling, the semifinals in hockey or the various medal events for speed skating. This wine, which is available in 125 Vintages sections across Ontario for $18.95 a bottle, can also be ordered online.

To discover many  more Canadian wines, read all of The Ontario Wine Diva’s Olympic tasting notes.

Pinot noir scandal

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

Bad_wine_SmallGallo’s 2007 Red Bicyclette Pinot noir landed in the #2 position on booquet top charts this week. Could this, in part, be due to the buzz of scandal? Here’s the story from London’s The Independent:

It all started when investigators became suspicious that Pinot noir exports from the Languedoc-Roussillon area far exceeded historic levels.

Thirteen people including executives from two wineries, five co-operatives, négociant Ducasse and conglomerate Sieur d’Arques have been charged with selling Gallo millions of dollars’ worth of wine which was labelled pinot noir, but which, if truth be allegedly told, wasn’t. The quantity involved is staggering – 3.57 million gallons, enough to fill 16 million bottles, or 460 oil tankers.

If the defendants are found guilty, this scandal will join an elite group of international fine wine cons: A component of antifreeze added to Austrian wine (1985); Italian table wines made of water, methanol, plus a little red wine for (1986); the great mislabeled Bordeaux Case of 1989; Sauvignon Blanc fortified with green peppers and synthetic methoxypyrazine (2005); and sugar added to Beaujolais (2007).

______

Read another post on the topic from Grapes & Grains

Wine: A channel for humanitarian aid to Haiti?

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Top charts on booquet are bubbling up conversations about wines being sold at auction to raise relief aid for the humanitarian crisis in Haiti. Check out the following blogs to follow the developments:

The “state of booquet”

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

After 6 months of work and just a few months from releasing our beta and iPhone app to the public,  here are a few high-level stats to give you a snapshot of where we are and how ambitious our concept is:

- booquet captures over 370,000 blogs, twitter accounts, message boards, and forums

- booquet has certified over 240,000 wines that are now live with posts and tweets associated on the site

- we have over 600,000 wines waiting to be approved (whether they have posts or no posts associated to them)

- there are nearly 67,000 wineries identified and live on the site

- each day, more than 4,000 blog posts, tweets, status updates, comments, replies about wine are added to the site

- over 230,000 wines carry an online purchase option

- we are nearly a third of the way done cataloging the online wine conversation

But wait, as noted in a previous post by Christine Kraft, we shall deliver an iPhone version of booquet.com into the palm of your hand very soon.  Even more exciting!

Stay tuned for further news shortly and watch for release of our mobile app.