Also, we are offering 15% when you purchase a case of any wine, beers or liquors…mixed is fine! Use promo code CDH2010 at checkout when you choose 12 items! (there is a $50 minimum and this does not include shipping and handling)

Happy Holidays!

Port Brewing “Santa’s Little Helper” Imperial Stout 22 oz bottle $7.99
Sierra Nevada “Harvest Ale” 24 oz $ 6.49
Sierra Nevada “Estate Home Grown” $10.49
Goose Island “Demolition” 22oz $5.99
Deschutes “Hop Trip” 22oz $5.49
Full Sail “Sanctuary” 22oz $4.49
Full Sail “Hop Pursuit” 22oz $4.49
Stone/Victory/Dogfish Head collaboration “Saison du Buff” 12oz $3.49
Dry Dock Brewery “Seven Seas” Double Ipa 22oz $8.49
Lagunitas “Little Sumpin Wild Ale” 22oz $4.99

If you want to order now send me an email  info at wineundergroundgo.com

Telluride “Surround”

REPORT FROM TELLURIDE WINE FESTIVAL

I just returned from the annual Telluride Wine Festival, where my Manager of Wine and I were promoting the Wine Underground as a source for attendees to be able to get any of the wines and have them shipped to them—Yea!

Some of our impressions and highlights from the Festival:

Telluride: If you have never been to Telluride, Colorado, you must go!  It is one of the most beautiful places on earth—no doubt—nestled at the base of and surrounded by 14,000 foot peaks!  It is very green right now too, because of the plentiful rainfall this year, some of which we unfortunately got during the Festival—ouch!  Nevertheless, there were people visiting from many states, who all enjoyed wearing their jeans and jackets instead of dealing with the sweltering heat in places like Houston and Arizona.  Up on the mountainside, is the second town called Mountain Village, which is actually the ski town of Telluride.  It is connected to Telluride by a constantly running Gondola, which serves as the free public transportation system of the area.  What a great set-up, as we did not need our car at all once we arrived.  I would have to say that one of the highlights of the Telluride Wine Festival is Telluride itself!  Well worth the seven hour drive from Denver (or anywhere else).

The Festival: Two full days of seminars, wine dinners, and public tastings scattered throughout the town.  There were two public tastings: one on Friday, which was held under several different tents distributed around the town; and one on Saturday, which was held all in one place in the town park.  Hundreds and hundreds of great wines to choose from, and great food too! Citizen Cope played a concert immediately after the Saturday evening Grand Tasting.  There were hundreds of people, and all events were well attended.  Even the rain and soggy footing the first night would not keep people from enjoying their wines!  Did I mention the friendliness of the people?  There may have been many wine geeks, but no wine snobs!  Whether the locals or the visitors, the people were great, and very laid back.  My personal favorite event?  The Washington wine seminar, serving up some of the best Walla Walla wines at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday morning under sunny skies and breathtaking views.  Hmmm.

If you are looking for a great vacation spot in summers to come, I would encourage you to put the Telluride Wine Festival on your calendar.  Come and bask in the beauty and fun!  We will be there next year too.

This collection is for sale on a bid basis through July 31st.  Minimum bid is $2000.   Send bids and interests to kathy@wineundergroundgo.com, and we will get back to you the first week of August.

There is no explanation needed of the quality and desirability of California’s Silver Oak Cabernets.  Don’t miss out on this private collection offering!

In the recesses of the barrel room, Andy discusses Brabant, and it's follow up.

What are Wild and Barrel aged beers?

Basically both techniques go back to the origins of beer.  When we first began fermenting wheat and grain sugars in water, hops and other spices, we did not have the luxury of lab maintained yeast strains and temperature controlled stainless steel fementers.  Instead, we had to depend on the yeasts just floating around in nature, and whatever vessel we could find that could breath and stay relatively clean.  Today we called those wild and untamed yeasts “brettomyces”(brett) and the isolated, tagged and cultured yeasts “saccharomyces” (sacc)  Both of these little guys give us carbonation, alcohol and flavor, and there are hundreds of both types.  I pushed for a taxonomic clarification of the difference, but I was talking with Brewers, not microbiologists, so the basic gist I took away was that Saccs are most commomly lab cultured and relatively well understood and Bretts are not.  This could have led to the regionality of beers as much as water and grain.

Barrels are pretty strait forward.  Nearly all liquids, potent and not, have been stored in some sort of barrel at some point.  Wood, generally oak, seems to work very well for slowly fermenting, flavoring and resting alcoholic beverages.  The trend now is to get used barrels to add some of the resident flavor to the beer.  Just about any barrel is fair game, wine, whiskey and rum are in use in microbreweries all across the country.

American new interest in old technique beer

In the past decade or so brett and barrel beer has become increasingly popular in the United States.  Some breweries, such as Russian River and Lost Abbey, have throw an immense amount of weight behind this movement.  Not coincidentally both of those breweries are in California.  Others have slowly developed their own projects, such as Great Divide.  While many of the American companies are willing to share their knowledge openly with each other, each brewery has to approach these beers from their own angle.  Many do not have the capital and free time to play with the aging process.  Despite our best efforts, to this point, to scientifically isolate exactly the process of aging, there is still a very intuitive and natural touch needed to create a good or great barrel beer.  Fortunately for the beer connoisseurship world, more and more breweries are investing the resources into making these exciting brews.

Avery’s forray into Barrels

About five years ago, the Avery brewing company obtained a few barrels from several locations, mostly wineries, and began their trial and error process.  For the most part, the public was not privy to the experiments.  However the few versions that were available at special events were highly sought after.  Many of the test beers, were existing styles that were scavenged and placed in barrels and fed to a wild yeast strain.  The yeast strain was obtained from a Belgian company, but Avery and their brewers have developed  it into their own.  Several other Brett strains have been played with in various experiments, but it seems that they will continue using this Brett strain for the majority of their commercially released beers.  After successes like Bad Sally and Rare Rev, and blends like Vogelbekdieren (sp) and Voltron, Adam allowed his brewers to produce Brabant.  Brabant is the first in a potentially tri-annual release of nine month or more aged beers, several of which will have some level of Brett fermentation.

A note on Sour versus Brett

Many of us in the high-end beer drinkers think of Brett beers and Sour beers as synonyms.  Many of the examples we have would seem to back up that idea, from the most mild of Jolly Pumpkin to the face squeezing Cantillion.  The boys at Avery are quick to point out that many of the flavors you get in a sour beer can come from Brett, the sourness actually comes from a bacteria.  Usually lactobacillus, or one of it’s cousins, which is the same stuff that gives us sour cream, yogurt and in some cases sourdough bread.  The direction Avery happens to be taking is that of fully brett fermented beers that are not necessarily sour, such as Fifteen.  I personally seek both, and it looks like we have a wealth of variations come toward us.

What to take away

Through this lecture, and tasting, we were served about eight beers.  They were everything from fabulous finished products, to early stage productions, to personal foul ups.  At some level I enjoyed all of them, but I am not going to tell you about any of them specifically.  I would much rather that you go to your local brewery and take a tour.  Ask them about their high-end and extreme beers.  Support them at their events and try their one-offs.  Give them feedback on the experiments they are kind enough to share with you.  Eventually you will have some products available that you can be proud of on several levels, and we will all have a healthier beer industry.

A Special Thanks

Thank you very much to the Avery Brewing Company for letting a bunch of passionate beer drinkers in to talk about, and expose us to this whole process.  Esspecially thanks to CV, Andy and Fred for putting it all together and sticking around to see it all through.

On January 10th, the ninth annual Big Beer, Belgians and Barleywines Festival was held in Vail, CO. Here are a few notes and observations from my couple days there. This was started in 2001 by Brother and Sister Laura and Bill Lodge from Vail. They have worked had to make the Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival a world class event, showcasing higher alcohol and highly crafted Beer. One of the few rules for the tasting is that a brewery should only pour beer above 7% alcohol, which means everything the participants taste, will be special in some way.

Commercial Tasting:
This is where the entire event spawned from. This year over 70 different breweries were represented pouring more than 250 different beers. Breweries from all over the country flock to a ball room to show off the most interesting and creative libations they have in their repertoire. While you could get lost in the other activities and sessions of this event, the commercial tasting is the star of the weekend. Obviously people were excited about this, because the room was packed from opening to “last call.” Not only are you getting to taste some of the best beers in the world, but brewers, owners and impassioned and knowledgeable volunteers are pouring the beer. You are able to learn more about the craft brew world than you ever knew existed.

Experimental Beer Competition:
Each year a few brewers are selected to produce one experimental beer each. This feature fosters a creative, hands-on spirit to the event. The brewers hold a seminar explaining their brewing process and answer questions so beer aficionados, both new and seasoned, have a great opportunity to get further education in the art of craft beer. This year the entries were: “Obamanator” from the Wynkoop Brewery, “Torpedo Pale” from Sierra Nevada, “Coffee Porter” from Flying Fish, and “Double Rye IPA” from Anheuser-Busch. Obamanator had been created for the Democratic National Convention in Denver this past year, and shows the Wynkoop brewery’s commitment to quality and topicality. Sierra Nevada has long crafted quality beer with great hop character, and Torpedo follows in that vein with a fresh and citrusy spice. This was the first foray into coffee flavored beer for Flying Fish, and they have done very well, showing off a great coffee character without dominating the beer. It was great to see a large brewer such as A-B take this seriously and put a great product out, and let their very talented brewers show off their creativity.

Brewmaster Dinners:
There were two evenings featuring five course dinners which were organized as a three part collaboration between two breweries and a chef. One night was a joint effort between Avery and Dogfish Head breweries and Chef Mercer Mohr from the Vail Marriot. The other put together Russian River Brewing, Flying Dog Brewery and Darrel Jensen of Centre V. The challenge was to pair two beers and a food together into one culinary experience for each course. The concept of food –pairing is a wonderful new realm for highly crafted beers which is just being discovered, and explored. These events are spectacular with obvious effort put into both the cuisine and logistics. For anyone contemplating attending the festival, at least one of these dinners should be high on your list.

The role of The Wine Underground at this event was to expose participants to the Club Underbrew, the beer-of-the-month club of our retail company. We did give away two club memberships to:

Ron of Carlsbad, CA
Lauren of Grand Junction, CO
And here are a few links that you may enjoy:

Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival:
http://www.bigbeersfestival.com/index.html

Beer Buckle, you will want one:
http://www.thebeerbuckle.com/The-Beer-Buckle_c_1.html

Metromix review:
http://denver.metromix.com/events/photogallery/cheers-big-ears-to/888552/content

Karl Broman
Manager of Beergistics

I would take the theory a little bit further. Enjoyment does not have to be expensive, even though some expensive things are a lot of fun. However, I think that we should get as much value out of our entertainment dollar as we can. That does not mean having a florescent green fanny pack filed to the brim with clipped and wrinkled coupons and special offer deals that you haul around and dump out at every opportunity. I mean that we all have a tendency to think that throwing more money at an activity makes it more fun, when we have so much more fun available in what we are already doing.

This idea is nothing new, but instead of going to dinner with your friends, have a dinner party at a house, or a pot-luck. Of course, this is where I tell you that you can order a case, or half-case, of wine or beer from us; get some cool different, inexpensive, quirky stuff to pair well with your theme or foods. Which is a legitimate point, but this is not just a sales tool.

Go get one of those “party games” books, and look through it. There is something interesting in there, whether you want to admit it or not. Try a new game, or make your guests play with you. After you let your guard down a little bit, you will have a great time. Start a discussion about books, or current events. You’re not supposed to discuss politics or religion in “polite” society, but in your house you don’t have to be as “polite.” They are your friends, so pick a good group and start a heated discussion about politics, you can’t say this is a politically devoid time right now. That being said, this is not about angering people, it’s about challenging yourself and others.

You don’t need to organize and event to stretch inside your entertainment dollar. Go to your local park and walk around it, or people watch, or give the people watchers something to watch. Learn a new solitaire game. Take up crosswords. Get one of those “mind teaser” or logic puzzle books at the grocery store. Go to the DIY section of your books store or library and pick one out.

I think you’ll find that, even when you are feeling more flush, some of these things will stay in your fun repitoire, and you won’t be embarrassed to admit it.

And when you do have an open bottle of beer or wine, savor it.

Karl
Manager of Beergistics