Wine Gifts for Your Favorite Wine Lover

Ah Valentine's Day. It can be nerve-wracking trying to find the perfect gift for your sweetheart. If they love wine as much as they love you, look no further. Valentine's Day is for spoiling the people you love, and these gifts are luxurious enough to please even the hardest person to shop for. From a colorful notebook to keep track of wines they've had and loved, to a fancy new wine carafe, even to a special trip away to one of the most romantic cities in the world, here is a list of great wine gifts for your most beloved wino. 

1. Laguiole Millesime French Oak Wood Corkscrew - $129.95

2. Wines I Had and Liked Notebook - $13.55

3. Barrel Stave Candle Holder - $52.50

4. Two-Glass Gift Box - StandArt Edition, by Gabriel-Glas - $58

5. House Wine Carafe - $58

6. Leather Bike Wine Holder - $45

7. A romantic getaway for two to one of the world's most romantic cities! 

Cheers!

Alexis Truitt

Social Media and Marketing Assistant

Want to read more? Click below for more blog posts you'll enjoy!

  

Torii Mor's Annual Library Tasting 2016

This past Saturday we hosted our annual Library Tasting Event. We pulled out several older vintage wines from our library to share with you. It's always a fun event, and it's such a treat to taste wines that have been resting in our cellar. 

For this event, we pulled out some single vineyard wines (some vineyards we don't produce anymore!), an older Oregon Pinot Noir, and a beautiful 2003 Syrah Port! The line-up was as follows:

• 2001 Temperance Hill Vineyard Pinot Noir
• 2002 Hawks View Vineyard Pinot Noir
• 2002 Seven Springs Vineyard Pinot Noir
• 2003 Oregon Pinot Noir
• 2004 Anden Vineyard Pinot Noir
• 2005 Shea Vineyard Pinot Noir
• 2003 Syrah Port

Not only is this a fun event to brighten up a dreary January day, but it's a great way to add some really special bottles to your cellar. If you missed out, visit our shop to get your hands on the last few remaining bottles we have of these delicious wines! 

Do you have any favorite older vintage Torii Mor wines? Let us know in the comments!

Cheers!

Alexis Truitt

Social Media and Marketing Assistant

Want to read more? Click below for more blog posts you'll enjoy!

  

Aging Well: A Guide to Aging Wines

Let's start with a quick disclaimer before we get to the fun nitty-gritty: most red and white wines you buy on the shelf are meant to be consumed within a year or two of purchase. Most red wines and white wines especially, are made to be ready-to-drink. 

But never fear! There are plenty of gorgeous wines out there that are indeed made for aging, and taste better after being aged. Oregon Pinot Noirs, (Jacques's wines in particular) are made for aging, due to their higher acids and tannins. But we'll get into that further down. Let's start with a quick history lesson.

Why Aging Wine isn't a Necessity Anymore

Historically, aging wine was what you did when you wanted your wine to reach its best-drinking peak. It was common to wait a few years to have a wine that had really come into its own, settled into racks, nestled next to other bottles, each waiting to be opened at their prime. However, modern wine is a different story. 

Due to advancements in winemaking and wine technology, wines are produced without the need for wait time and are ready drink right way. Wine can still age, of course, and can even benefit from aging, but it is no longer necessary to achieve exquisite wine. 

Most wines have a peak in the aging process, after which they degrade and diminish. Matt Kramer from Wine Spectator recommends no more than 5-10 years for most wines in current circulation, due to the affinity for ready-to-drink wines. 

Characteristics of Ageable Wine

There are four main traits to look for in ageable wines: low alcohol, high acidity, tannin structure, and residual sugar. 

As a general rule, wines with lower alcohol content are better to age. The higher the alcohol, the faster a wine can turn to vinegar if left too long. If you're looking for particularly ageable wines, a safe bet is to go for wines less than 13.5% ABV. 

High acidity and a strong tannin structure both play a part in helping carry a wine's flavors as the wine ages. Higher acid helps wines last longer which of course helps flavors develop. Tannins provide structure to the wine, and as the wine ages, the tannins smooth out, allowing the fruity and earthy notes to become more prominent and more mature. 

Residual sugar is another good bet for ageable wines. The higher the sugar content, the longer a wine can age. Now, the first thing that comes to mind if desserts wines: ports, sherries, late harvest wines, ice wines. All these wines also have higher alcohol content, but the high sugar content acts as a preserver, and these wines can age up to 100 years! 

Top Tips for Buying Ageable Wine

1. Aim for colder vintage wines. Grapes grown in colder vintages (as well as at higher elevations) tend to have the best characteristics (like lower acid and lower alcohol) of ageable wines. Hot vintages are bigger, fruitier, and have higher alcohol contents. 

2. Taste before you buy. This probably doesn't even need to be said, but don't buy a case of wine to age for a decade that you haven't tasted and surveyed yourself. Make sure it's something you could enjoy now, but would like to see expand and grow over the years.  

3. Certain varietals age better than others. Cabernet Sauvignon is a very reliable wine to age due to it's high tannins, as are Pinot Noirs from cool climates (like Oregon or Burgundy), and most Tempranillos and Sangiovese. 

4. Wine in large format bottles ages at slower rates. If you want to hold on to a wine for longer than 10 years, a magnum (or larger!) is a great way to preserve a special wine for a special occasion. 

5. Remember that wine changes. And quite often that change is good. Embrace it, enjoy it, and don't forget to chronicle those especially special bottles. They're meant to be shared. 

Cheers!

Alexis Truitt

Social Media and Marketing Assistant

Want to read more? Click below for more blog posts you'll enjoy!

  

Winter Vineyard Report

Winter can be a slow season, but while the vineyard sleeps, the winery is still churning out deliciousness for you! Jacques detailed some of the goings-on in the winery this winter in our most recent newsletter, but here he details one more exciting project: the start of our grappa production! If you missed the newsletter, sign up here by scrolling down to the bottom of the page! 

The vineyard is peaceful right now. Other than the occasional family of deer visiting from time to time, I can’t see any other creature stirring around. With this record rain we are having, (eleven inches and counting), nobody is going in the vineyard to start pruning until early January. Neither the rain or the wind have done any damage though; the vineyard rows themselves are covered with native grasses, their roots anchoring the soil and preventing erosion.

In the winery, we finished barreling the Pinot Noirs in October, and Malo-Lactic fermentation is happening in those barrels right now. All the Pinot Noirs have great fruit aroma and flavors, more on the fresh fruit side than the raisiny-jammy side.  With a mix of red and dark fruit, good acidity and soft tannins the wines show great promise.

All the white wine fermentations are also done. All taste great as they should, following a warm summer and cool September.

We have also been quite busy distilling both brandy, from juice pulled out of the Pinot Noir fermenters to keep a good ratio liquid-solid, the berries were so big and full of juice, and grappa from our Pinot Noir skins and seeds left over after pressing.

We just finished distilling the grappa and we like what came out of the still, very sweet and not really harsh as most grappa can be.

We had to make our own still for the grappa with what we had on hand. A 100-gallon stainless steel tub that we covered with a lid with the spare goose neck from our copper still worked amazingly well for a minimum investment. We were not sure if the grappa was going to be any good, but now we know, it is GOOD!

Happy winter!

Jacques Tardy, Winemaker

Want to read more? Click below for more blog posts you'll enjoy!