23 | June | 2009 | Wannabe Wino Wine Blog

Wark Communications

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Sonadora

30 Days until the Wine Blogger Conference! Wahoo! If you didn’t get to sign up for this year, MAKE SURE TO REGISTER FIRST THING next year! Don’t say I didn’t warn you…the conference size increased by 75 participants this year and yet there is still a waiting list. That’s why I registered the day the announcement was made! Lucky for our Scholarship Recipients, and thanks to the generous donations of companies like Wark Communications, we were able to get 11 wine bloggers sponsored and registered before the conference sold out. Without the kind support of companies like Wark Communications who believe wine blogs are important, we wouldn’t have been able to fund the scholarship winners and we all would have been worse off without their presence at the WBC.

If you’re in the wine world and you haven’t heard about Wark Communications, Tom Wark, or Fermentation…well, perhaps you’ve been living under a rock. Tom Wark has long been a wine blog champion, having been continuously writing Fermentation since October 2004, making it one of the longest running wine blogs out there. Wark Communications is Tom’s Public Relations Firm, located in Sonoma. Wark Communications provides services ranging from product launches to event management and everything in between, targeted specifically to meet the needs of the wine industry. So if you are in need of that type of service, be sure to check out Wark Communications.

Many thanks to Wark Communications for their generous donation to the WBC Scholarship Fund.

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Heaven in a Glass

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Sonadora

*Disclaimer: I received this wine as a sample from Hall Wines.

I have to admit. If you saw my rough notes that I took on this wine before I crafted them into this lovely write up (did I ever mention I’m slightly delusional?) you might think a text-crazy teenager wrote them. My notes on this wine are peppered with “OMGs” and “YUM” and “Fab!” So now, you might be wondering, what could possibly make me devolve into writing like that? The 2006 Kathryn Hall Cabernet Sauvignon. I’ll say it again: oh.my.god. This was good. Really good. It’s way outside my normal wine price range, but is definitely something I would spend the extra scratch on for a special occasion. Or to lay down for the next 10 years or so. It retails for $75 and is worth every darn penny. The wine had a real cork closure and clocked in at 14.5% alcohol by volume.

On the nose of the wine I got cherry pie, vanilla, meat, a hint of milk chocolate, cedar, smoke, blackberries, earth, black currants, plums, dark smoky fruit, vanilla bean, and pepper. This was one of those wines where I wanted to go swimming in my glass and soak up all the aromas. I served this with steaks off the grill, corn on the cob, and risotto. Oh the steak….and the Cab…and the grill….just….yum. In the mouth I found spice, pepper, plum, black fruit, vanilla cream, Coke, licorice, cherries, and earth. Overall, this is just a refined, classy wine. It had tannins to spare and could use time in your cellar, but if you pour it in a decanter and give it an hour or two, this is refined and easy to drink. If I smoked, I’d like to light a cigar with it!