An audience of two

Friday May 02, 2008

Happy 30th Birthday, Spam!
On May 2nd, 1978 (or possibly May 3rd, depending on who you believe) Gary Thuerk sent the first ever unsolicited commercial email. Though the actual term SPAM wasn't coined for another 15 years, according to Brad Templeton.

Happy f5g birthday, Spam.

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2005 Juan Gil Jumilla
I've been neglecting this area of the blog recently. I started a separate blog on the wines of the Santa Cruz Mountains and Santa Clara Valley and have been posting all my tasting notes and comments there. Plus I've not been drinking that much from outside the SCM/SCV AVAs, and when I have I've not felt like making notes. So I have the day off - let's fix that.

I recently discovered this wine in Costco. For $12 it seemed a good price. I don't tend to drink much Spanish wine, but a few vocal enthusiasts in my various wine circles have been banging the drum for Spain, saying it's not all Rioja and Ribera del Duero. In particular, Jumilla is often cited as an area that's producing great wines at really good prices, and this is a great example.

The varietal is Monastrell, also known as Mourvèdre or Mataro (and various other names too). You don't often see Mourvèdre bottled on its own - the only local examples I can think of offhand are Bonny Doon's Old Telegram and Cline's Small Berry - but it's often used as a blending grape in Rhone style wines.

This is a big, fruity wine. It's nice right at the start, but I opened one on Wednesday evening, drank half and left the rest overnight in the fridge - on Thursday it had opened up and was much better. So I'd definitely encourage decanting it - simply pour it into a 2 pint jug and back into the bottle, it'll make a big difference. If you like big reds but don't have a big budget this is definitely a wine to try.

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