Zum Martin Sepp Rosé 2012 proves to be a 'cool guy' wine

Bottom of the Barrel: Ellis "La Forza" Palmieri '17 joins us to uncork a taste of Italy

Senior year is all about friendships—and crippling stress but I digress—so what better way to start our first wine column of the year than to invite our dear friend and housemate Ellis “La Forza” Palmieri ’17, co-captain emeritus of the much-vaunted Bowdoin Rugby Football Club, to join us. Ellis spent all of winter break in Italy, and that mere fact alone means he already knows more about wine than either of us.
With our internationally travelled friend on the mind, we selected a Bell’Agio Chianti 2015, proudly bearing both the wicker-basketted bottle oft associated with wines of its kind and the candles used at the Cub Scout Spaghetti Dinner fundraisers at which Will used to work. A wine that displays its national and regional origins so proudly is perfect for this, we thought, seeing as such a wine must truly try its best to represent its roots well. We hoped to impress La Forza with our eye for fine Italian vintages, knowing that his potential disappointment in it would leave us in the lowest of spirits.
This wine smells of dust despite its young age. Smelling this wine dims the lights of whatever room you’re in to the luminosity of a single lit taper. All sounds take on the din of quiet conversation. Suspense lingers on every sniff. The taste reveals the wine to be a heavy hitting red, reminiscent of certain boxed varietals found in regions across our great nation. Tasting reveals a change in equation. Nuance is not on the table. Justin was quick to note that the wine tastes like what he imagined wine tasting like when he was at the table with his parents at various Italian eateries. You’d think the buttery grapes would glide you to the hill towns of central Tuscany. However, upon second and third sip, it appears your journey has been redirected to somewhere of a different tone. Tuscaloosa, perhaps? Or could we be detecting notes of Happy Valley, Pennsylvania? The mouthfeel left by the bev was vinous, to say the least. Seconds after the garnet liquid passes down your throat the taste of what one can only identify as wine lingers.
With that, we’ll leave you with this:
The Palmieri Review
Many thanks to Big Billy Schweller and JJ “Drama” Ramos for the feature in this week’s article. As they’ve already informed you, I spent my winter traversing the wine country of my homeland experiencing only the finest of this succulent red fruit. The aforementioned journey across Italy became a sort of spirit quest to reestablish my innate connection to the grapevine.
If I learned anything from my dear mother (Hi Mom!) who was more than generous, and more than quite insistent, that I partake in the tasting of fine Italian wines, I would say that the Chianti proves underwhelming among the ranks of its peers. While the Chianti is able to pose as a good wine to the lesser-versed wine drinkers that sit to my right and left, the true Italian wines of Amarone and Brunello are the heavyweight fighters when it comes to Italian wines. To settle the long standing family debate over which carries more weight, I’ll use this credible and well established wine forum to be the first to publish the final verdict—Amarone is a better wine than a Brunello. Chianti is nice if you like grape juice, but the real wine drinkers won’t go wrong with an Amarone.
Additional Notes
Tonight's Soundtrack: "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?"-Frankie Lyman & The Teenagers
Justin: "This wine would gain a full star rating if I had an Italian delicacy to pair it with. RIP to the ball Scamorza left home over break 1/21/17-1/22/17."
Will: "I can't say I'd buy this wine to drink again, but I can say I'd buy this wine to keep a few bottles in my room for the aesthetic."
Nose: 4/5
Legs: 3.5/5
Mouthfeel: 2.5/5
Taste: 2.5/5
Overall: 3/5

Bottom of the Barrel: Hungover Sunday in Woodstock is as magical as you would imagine

Have you ever woken up in a bunk-bed in a Vermont cabin accompanied by great friends and a pain in your head? Well your esteemed columnists sure have. A couple weekends back we ventured over to the Green Mountain State for no real reason at all and found ourselves in the picturesque town of Woodstock, Vermont. Per the recommendation of a dear friend and Woodstock regular, we stopped in at the famed FH Gillingham & Sons general store to see what they had to offer. Gillingham did not disappoint in its wine selection, containing delightful bottles both Old World and New. We thought, to commemorate our Grand Excursion, that we ought to get something that reflected the local terroir.
Putney’s Apple Maple Wine presented itself as a truly Vermont vino. When one who has spent relatively little time in the state thinks of Vermont, he thinks of apples and maple. Rumor has it that some who spend lots of time in the state think of apples and maple when they think of Vermont. While the verdict isn’t out on what makes this wine a wine and not a cider (many of the options stoked at Gillingham were marketed as ciders), your reviewers were very excited to try this bev and look back on our idyllic weekend spent slightly south of where we currently are.
We uncorked the bottle on a calm, unseasonably warm Monday night, dreaming of cross-country skiing, taking the kids on a sleigh ride and chopping pine on a Saturday afternoon. The wine pours clear and looks like a golden, grape-only white wine. We believe this color is almost certainly derived from the apples. Apple cider is sort of golden, right? There isn’t much of a nose to the wine, but the legs show just from the pour. Not able to smell a whole-heck-of-a-lot, we dove right into our tasting.
This wine does not taste like a grape-only wine. This wine is, upon initial contact between beverage and tongue, dry. This wine, seconds after this initial contact between b and t, tastes spicy. This wine has a kick. This wine probably has a kick from the maple. These reviewers question whether the maple was added before or after fermentation. The kick may derive from a spicy post-fermentation addition of maple. The kick may derive from the fermentation of honey producing a drying-out quality. Interestingly enough, this wine is mild in the booze department, clocking in at a calm and tender 10 percent. This kick, this spice, is mysterious.
In theory: we are fond of this wine. It is an interesting application of local resources to create a product representative of a space and time. It is clear from visiting the winery’s website that the vintners are passionate about producing a quality product in a place that they love. At the end of the day, that’s a great thing. While the wine may not be to our tastes, were we to open a bottle shop (currently seeking investors), it’s a product we’d proudly sell.
Additional Notes:
Tonight's Soundtrack: Phish, live: August 20, 1993 - Red Rocks, Morrison, Colorado
Justin: "Vermon is cool, not quite Maine cool, but in my live ranking of New England states it has surpassed Rhode Island. Also Boston—it was always cooler than Boston. “
Will: “It’s foolhardy to talk about the Vermont beverage industry without making reference to its incredible craft brewing scene. Speaking of beer, if Jae-Yeon Yoo [’18] and Nick Benson [’17] of the Orient’s Tapped Out column want to review my homebrew, I wouldn’t stop them."
Nose: 2/5
Legs: 4/5
Mouthfeel: 3/5
Taste: 1.5/5
Overall: 2.785/5

Bottom of the Barrel

Zum Martin Sepp Rosé 2012 proves to be a 'cool guy' wine

This piece represents the opinion of the authors:

February 10, 2017

Schweller: Moulton Light Room breakfaster, grew a mustache all summer, has a pretentious major, has worn his beanies super far back on his head, doesn’t eat meat, brews his own beer, the little-known Bowdoin Don Dada of the Birkenstock clog, lives in Cleave

Ramos: Sneaky theater guy, listened to Vampire Weekend in ’07, thinks La La Land is straight hype, macaroni art enthusiast, not as crunchy as Will, lives in Cleave

A lot of the time, we sacrifice for you folks. We drink duds so that we can create amusing musings tangentially related to said duds so that you can read them out of sympathy for us, but you never leave the exchange between author and reader feeling like you want to go out and buy the duds and drink them and share in our experience. This week your columnists were feeling like ~cool guys~, and ~cool guys~ don’t buy just any old dud. So we made a trip towards Tess’ Market over on Pleasant Street for some ~cool guy~ wine.

And ~cool guy~ wine did we find in the Zum Martin Sepp Rosé 2012.

This pale, pale, pale, rosé wine is mysterious. Elusive. Found covered in dust on the floor of a narrow row in the back of Tess’ Market, the bottle is shaped weirdly relative to your standard Hanny’s fare. The bottle is squat, probably a 1-liter. Instead of a cork, it had a beer cap, which to Will suggests some sort of small-time, back-alley secret—like this wine was quickly bottled and then hidden away. The label is simple, slightly faded and torn. The wine is advertised as an Austrian rosé, and the label bears a street address in Vienna. Perhaps that of the vintner who so carefully stashed this bottle on Pleasant Street for us to find. Described on the back of the bottle as a dry red wine reminiscent of Pinot Noir, the Zweigelt grapes promised to create a wine complex, spicy, suggestive of times spent discussing Das holländische Gruppenporträt with Riegl before the War. The fact that the wine was called simply Rosé should have been a suggestion that we were in for light fare, but regardless we were surprised as all get-out when we poured a liquid the color of a pinkish-yellow fit for a nursery.

We first tasted the wine very lightly chilled. It smelled big. In your face. JNCO jean big. It tastes, upon first sip, like a summer spent in Brunswick Apartment K3. It tastes like keeping the windows open at night even though folks are outside milling about, making all kinds of noise. It tastes like jumping into Sewell Pond from the rope swing and stopping at DQ on the way back. But, FR FR, it only tastes like this for like a millisecond. Then it tastes dry. Like licking a dog’s bone two seasons after it buried it dry. Clean. Like straight booze, sucking the moisture out of your mouth. But in a good way. It makes you think. Several friends who sipped this sweet (sweet only in the sense of “sweet juice” being a common turn-of-phrase, and common turns-of-phrase [not to mention overly complex sentences] [or semi-niche hip-hop references] being our bread and butter [see what we mean]) juice commented on their fondness for it.

Public Service Announcement: wine is good. Being sick is bad. One of the reasons being sick is bad is that it makes wine, which is good, taste bad. For our sniffling and sneezing columnist, Justin, this ~cool guy~ wine had a lot of anticipation. But ultimately it tasted like dry water with a boozy after taste. So, for those afflicted with the common cold, leave the ~cool guy~ wine for another time.

Additional Notes:

Tonight's Soundtrack: "LOL :-)" by Trey Zongz feat. Gucci Mane and Soulja Boy Tell 'Em

Justin: "Hot take: being sick is not a ~cool guy~ move."

Will: "This is honestly the first wine that I want to buy multiple bottles of to drink. Really, genuinely, liked it, no poorly conceived jokes needed."

Nose: 4/5

Legs: 4/5

Mouthfeel: 4/5

Taste: 4/5

Overall: 4/5

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