Genentech has grown to be quite a large and influential company over it's 30+ years. One thing that has remained the same is a small group of employees and wine fanatics known as gOenophiles. Much like many things at my company, the penchant for adding a "g" to the beginning of any otherwise normal word is conserved with the naming of this loose-knit group of blind wine tasters. With many disparate backgrounds, temperates and interests gOenophiles do have two things in common, a love for wine and deep conviction in the power of tasting wines blindly.
Tasting wines blindly has a tremendous affect on your palate. The best way to try and quickly build your palate and perhaps more importantly, a *confidence* in your own palate is to put together a blind wine tasting. Tasting wine's with little to no prior information forces you to really probe the colors, aromas and flavors that you encounter. Is the red wine in front of you bright ruby, a darker garnet or even showing some browner shades on the edges near the rim? Is there a lot of fruit in the nose or is it earthy or smelling like the rich dampness and organic mustiness of a forest floor? What kind of fruit is is, which is dominating the flavors in your mouth? Are they like red fruits such as cherry and raspberry or more darker fruit like blackberry? Or maybe that white wine has a whole lot of white fruit like peach, pear and nectarine? 
Beth and I had a free Wednesday evening the other week so we decided to head over to one of the newer local wine destinations in the East Bay, Artisan Wine Lounge and Cafe. The lounge sits just off the much busier Locust St in downtown Walnut Creek. The map says Stave Wine Lounge and Cafe, because the business partners that own Artisan, Lena Chu and Kevin Ng, also own Stave, situated in Napa.
Lena chooses wines from small and cult California wine producers, as well as those that remind her of her years living in Spain. This is also shown in the great small plates menu that they offer. Beth and I weren't that hungry the night we were there, so we just chose a couple "Small Bites" to nibble on, the Marinated Olives and the Artisan Cheese Plate. We really liked the Manchego cheese, which went quite well with just about every wine we tried that night. The stronger blue cheese that was offered was also outstanding, but we had to leave it towards the end when we had some tastes of the dessert wine. 
On Saturday 01/19/08, I had the outstanding opportunity to attend the latest K&L Wines Bordeaux tasting, fortuitously all from the very well-regarded 2005 vintage. I have to thank Jason & Kim for the chance to attend and big shout out to my friend Spesh (WL) who first notified me of the event. It was held in the hall of the old Federal Reserve Building in San Francisco. I hopped on BART at 2pm and headed out to the first major French tasting that I've ever had the chance to attend.
Stepping back a little, I had a bit of confusion when I first heard about the event. I initially saw an email that said it would include all Classified Growths from Bordeaux, which was actually in error. There is an organization of Bordeaux Chateaux separate from the Bordeaux Official Classification of 1855 (Grand Crus Classes en 1855), somewhat misleadingly called Union des Grand Crus de Bordeaux. It is made up of both classified and unclassified growths of Bordeaux vintners.
Regardless of my misinterpretation of which Chateaux would be pouring, I had a brilliant time tasting all of these wines, particularly the ones that I will probably never be able to afford, ever again. So there’s another annual “100 Top Wines” list on the block these days. It seems like this aspect of the wine industry gets blown out of proportion more and more every year (see the marketing ploy for the 100 from Wine Spectator this year??), but this new one is more interesting than any other, at least...
