SQN, HB, Angelus and How to Cook a Wolf

WINE TALK
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Lisa and I got together with Eric last night for a preview of the new CellarTracker interface, a few great wines and an interesting food experience. First, the wines. We started off with The Hoodoo Man while previewing all of the new CT goodies.

2006 Sine Qua Non The Hoodoo Man - USA, California (10/29/2009)
Lovely tropical fruits on the nose with a touch of honey and some oak. Very tasty mix of white fruits on the palate and the relatively high alcohol is very well concealed. Finishes strong with some oak on the back end but it isn’t overly offensive in any way and in fact, it just adds to the overall complexity of the wine. It improved as it came up to room temperature from cellar temp. One of the best white wines I’ve had. I’d love to revisit this wine in a few years as I think it has potential to get even better. (94 pts.)

Then, on to How to Cook a Wolf, which is an eclectic little restaurant where we shared some equally interesting dishes:

beef tongue and roasted red pepper panini
chicken liver mousse bruschetta
raw Escolar with avocado and lime
hand made pork sausage on a bed of farro and spinach
porcini and marjoram polenta
beef carpaccio
coppa, fried egg and parsley vinaigrette potato salad

We had brought a bottle of 04 Haut Brion up with us from Santa Cruz and Eric brought along an 89 Angelus and while the wines and the food were not an ideal match, it didn’t really matter as each dish had a life of it’s own and the wines shone brightly all by themselves.

All of the different dishes were amazing in their own way but the raw Escolar really blew my mind with it’s elegant buttery texture and amazing flavor. For me, a non sushi person, to enjoy this as much as I did was quite a surprise.

As for the wines, the 04 Haut Brion was and exercise in baby killing but worth it and the 89 Angelus was otherworldly.

1989 Château Angélus - France, Bordeaux, Libournais, St. Émilion Grand Cru (10/29/2009) Wow. Simply awesome. Earth, old leather, spice on the nose. Gobs of tasty dark fruit mixed with nice acidity and rounded out with a fabulously long finish. An amazing treat of a wine. (97 pts.)

2004 Château Haut-Brion - France, Bordeaux, Graves, Pessac-Léognan (10/29/2009)
Upon initial pop, this showed very much like a new world cab with some dark fruits dominated by oak. However, I like how the oak comes across on this wine with a soft texture and a bit of a chocolate note and it only took about 30 mins for the secondary flavors to start to emerge. Balance is wonderful on the palate and constantly improved with time. Excellent finish and tons of potential. Very tasty. (95 pts.)

As for all the CT goodies? I think you hard core CT power user’s will be very happy with the incredible amount of thought and effort that Eric is putting in to the new interface. It looks great and really takes a giant leap forward from what we already love today.

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That was a ton of fun!

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Rob/Eric, is this how the new interface looks like when you post an event? It seems like it’s a template. If so it’s really slick… good job!

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I presume the above is the normal UBB publishing from CellarTracker. The new interface only exists on the laptop I am posting this from.

I did spend maybe 60 or 90 minutes taking Rob and Lisa through the whole design process I have followed with Fellswoop and YiuStudios over the past year: from personas; key target scenarios; wireframes (150 pages of 'em!); visual design and templates in XHTML and gorgeous CSS; and then finally a demo of the live code as it exists in my development environment (including switching back and forth to a local version CellarTracker running against the same exact database).

I still have plenty of work to do over the next 6-8 weeks to get the beta out there, but it was fun to replay the process and explain how I got where I am. If nothing else, a lot of planning has gone into this. My favorite part was when I was switch backing and forth and could see Rob have a deep, visceral reaction as I switched back to the current interface. He basically deflated. It is hard for me to quantity, but the new design really is infinitely easier to read and absorb. The information is broken up and formatted much more consistently with a lot of design thought (by design experts) down tot he smallest pixel, color selections etc.

Anyway, back to the salt mines now. I am finally done new with the new wine-editing screen which I have been playing with for a week, probably one of the most complex form implementations on the current and new site. Whew. Thank goodness for JQuery and AJAX, the stuff is simply amazing.

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I must say that I was really surprised at my own reaction after having Eric go through a live demo of the new UI and then switching back to the current CT interface. Like many CTers, I have that “engineer” background which likes the way things are set up now but the new stuff was so slick that when Eric flipped back to the current interface, I felt like I had traveled back in time and I was instantly wanting to get back to the present.

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nice to hear Eric! looking forward to it. Oh uh… Rob… nice wines too neener

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Damn it. this is just a tease

how do you sign up to drink SQN and preview the new interface??

I’ll pay travel cost! (tho i live in Kirkland) :slight_smile:

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G-Damn I love 89 Angelus…and the 90, 95, 98, 00.

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One of the things I will probably try to do is have a small, local launch party once the thing goes live or is about to. I need to get a bit closer before I can think about that, but locals should stay tuned.

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BTW, here are my lame TN’s for the night:

  • 2006 Sine Qua Non The Hoodoo Man - USA, California (10/29/2009)
    Drinking very well. Honeyed, funky nose, wonderful palate, rich, dry, some hints of apricot, some nuttiness. Very complex and pleasing wine that has really matured well over the past year. Not a hint of heat.
  • 1989 Château Angélus - France, Bordeaux, Libournais, St. Émilion Grand Cru (10/29/2009)
    Mmm, just awesome. Funky charcoal briquette. Heavy mineral and cocoa on the palate. Utterly delicious right-banker.
  • 2004 Château Haut-Brion - France, Bordeaux, Graves, Pessac-Léognan (10/29/2009)
    A bit oaky when first poured, tight, tart, nice acidity but lean and reserved. However with aeration this gained a nice smokiness and more black fruit. Stunning balance, really impeccable wine even as a baby killing. Some of those Graves flavors were already peeking out.

Posted from CellarTracker

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has the wine searcher integration always been there?

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Launch party = GREAT idea.

flirtysmile

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Yes, since January, 2009. And from October, 2006-2007. From November, 2007 through 2008 it was WineZap.