Another Wednesday and time for some more Wine Trivia. The last couple of weeks I ventured away from the objective and toward the subjective. Two weeks ago, the question centered on whether or not smelling the cork made any sense (it doesn’t) and I solicited comments on how and why the practice came into vogue.  Last week, I posed another question that really does not have a right answer:

You invite four couples you know (at least casually) over for dinner and they all know you are a ‘wine guy’, a ‘wine gal’ or a ‘wine questioning’. However, you commit the ultimate wine-guy-dinner-party-faux-pas and do not let your guests know what you are making for dinner. As a result, the four couples each bring a bottle of wine, but not all would meld well with your dinner. If you are a visual learner, imagine you made some halibut with a lemon/caper/prosciutto sauce (I guess I should put that recipe up at some point) and your guests bring a Right Bank Bordeaux, a Napa Zinfandel, a (white) Sancerre, and an Austrian Grüner Veltliner.

Two of the wines would certainly work with the dish and two–not so much. What do you do? Would you serve all the wines that your guests brought? Would you serve only those that ‘worked with the meal? Would you sequester all the wines off to the cellar?

Obviously, there is no real ‘right’ answer to this one.  Those of you that responded provided excellent answers, all of which seem to work for you.  Personally, my approach used to be focused strictly on the pairing and would put all the ‘gifts’ aside.  Now, we have changed and basically, if you bring it, we are going to open it (unless you tell me otherwise).  Why the shift?  A couple of reasons: I would feel guilty drinking the wine later without the person who brought it over and I am too lazy/forgetful to enter the wine into Cellar Tracker so I completely forget about it for seven years until I do my next sweeping inventory.

As you can see, my wife is once again right: it’s all about me.

To this week’s quiz.  At the Wine Bloggers Conference this year, Rex Pickett, the author of Sideways, gave one of the keynote addresses. Long before his keynote, I had decided that I wanted to read the novel since I was such a fan of the movie–but I could not find a copy of it before my trip out to Oregon. After the keynote (which was at times funny, but mostly self-absorbed and egotistical), he was selling books and I thought (notice I did not say ‘I thought to myself’ another pet peeve of mine–who else are you going to ‘think to’?) ‘what the heck’ and bought both Sideways and Vertical (the sequel). Later, I ran into him at one of the many after parties and tried to chat him up a bit.  Let’s just say he was either really drunk or a bit of an odd bird (or both). Nonetheless, I started reading them since I love to read and they are novels ‘about’ wine. If I only read works by well adjusted writers, well…

I am about half way through Sideways and it is pretty good–the movie also seems to be rather ‘true’ to the novel (although I must say that this is one case where the movie might be better than the book).

I just read the part when Miles and Jack made their way up the coast and stopped off for their first tasting, at Sanford Winery.  In the clip below, they pull into a rather dilapidated building that houses a asymmetric oak tasting bar.

That leads to today’s question:

That tasting room is not a part of Sanford Winery today, but it is the tasting room for another winery.  What is the ‘new’ winery?

Extra Credit: Explain what happened….