Week Twelve! Back to wine
But your poor organizer
Is fresh out of wit
New sommelier
To pick out a tasty one
We all say WhyNot?
For Week Eleven
Shiraz-Cab and Frontier Red
Here is the linky
I’d suggest Lelia, a lovely garnacha. or with the warmer weather, perhaps a nice rose` [sic] like Allison? or Chaume Arnaud?
I will preempt here
Line forms after yours truly
Cold February. 
No syllables in a smilie, are there?
Great Dave, would you like to be added to the sommelier list? It may not be all the way into next Feb before you have a turn, because some of the listed people have not really been participating. Your semi-fearless quasi-leader reserves the right to arbitrarily and autocratically skip non-participants to allow participants to act as sommelier. So again I will warn: If you are listed on Plynck’s spreadsheet as a sommelier and you haven’t been participating, we will assume you aren’t interested and you will be skipped.
It’s great fun to just drink and discuss anyway. All the threads link to each other, and one a couple of threads back included links to all previous threads. Feel free to browse and just let me know if I can help you with anything. I’ll be at the register.
Nice spreadsheet. I didn’t realize that it was a 2-week interval between tastings. I guess we’re actually in fortnight twelve. 
As much as I love taking credit for another’s sweat and toil during the working day, I must draw the line here at the Straight Dope, and give full credit to psycat90 for that spreadsheet.
AFIAC, we can certainly move it up to weekly. We started with 2x month so that it didn’t get to be too much of a commitment. If people chime in with MORE MORE! we’ll switch it, otherwise we’ll leave it as is. Those who care, feel free to weigh in.
Given everybody’s schedules, and the problem with finding some of the wines, every two weeks seems to be just fine.
Sorry if I made that sound like I was suggesting it to be weekly. Seems like you found the right balance at 2 weeks. Balance is important-- especially in wine club! 
Damn! I just realized I’m going to be in Missourah by the time I come around. That means either I buy my favorite now and hold it (without drinking it hmph), or we’re all in for fermented cherries (That’s the sort of thing they do out there.) I have zero probability of finding a good wine store in the town I’m going to.
Actually, I’m making fun, there are some decent wines made in Missourah, but none that your likely to find in your neck of the woods.
Every 2 weeks works fine for me.
And here’s your fun factoid of the day.
America’s very first AVA was Augusta, MIssouri. Before Napa, before Sonoma.
The area makes some decent vinifera wines but is known for the hybrids Norton and Chambourcin. (I’ve tried them both and they are definitely not to my taste, but to each his own.)
I thought I’d help to make sure WhyNot saw this, while also sharing an interesting (to me) wine fact.
Opimian is an adjective applied to good wine - in fact, the Wine Society of Canada is called the Opimian Society. The name comes from a Roman politician, Lucius Opimius, who was consul in 121 BCE (and therefore gave his name to the year - Romans didn’t use numbers for years usually, they’d say “in the year that Opimius and Fabius”). Apparently 121 BCE was a really fantastic wine year, so much so that it became legendary.
The reason I care about all this is that L. Opimius and Q. Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus (you can see why they picked Opimius to refer to the year and not the other guy) are both extremely important figures in the MA thesis I’m writing this summer. In fact, before now, I hadn’t realized they were consuls in the same year, and that’s an important data point for me.
The moral of the story is that wine helps me write my thesis!
Been away from PC access since Thursday so I’m just catching up. Looks like we’re still awaiting WhyNot’s selection(s).
As for the frequency, I think as long as we try to stick to the 2 week schedule we’ll be OK. That allows enough time to search for something not on the common grocery shelf. When it stretches longer than 2 weeks, I think we start losing any sense of enthusiasm. The participation the last couple of rounds has been great, which makes this all the more fun.
Sorry to have butt in, I have peeked in these threads before, but not enough to really participate. I work p/t in a wine shop, and just wanted to throw in myy 2 cents. But might as well throw my name on the list, I think I might start paying more attention.
Yeah, I’m eagerly awaiting my turn as sommelier. I think I have an interesting pick, as long as no one steals my idea first!
ETA: We might want to change the title to SDMB Wine; makes the thread easier to find.
I wouldn’t have said that you butted in; you were just making a suggestion pre-emptively . I’m really just starting to learn about wine, so your perspective (working in a wine shop) will be educational to me. Coincidentally, I was drinking rose last week when we were sweltering, and it was most refreshing. The Lelia Garnacha looks like an interesting wine. I’ll have to look for it while we wait for our sommelier.
And while we wait, could I get a feeling from folks as to how we want certain things handled? For example, for those late to the party (moi), and who are only now tasting previous wines and want to comment, should we resurrect that thread, or post it here, or something else? How about wine talk in general? Anything works for me.
I’ve resurrected an old thread a couple of times when I’ve gone back and sampled that week, but it always seemed odd to have two active “week x” strings going at once.
A general wine clubs discussion thread for topics that don’t pertain to the current selection might work out as long as it just didn’t become an alternate pic string for those that can’t wait their turn thus taking attention away from the official current pick.
As we are one week into a two week schedule, should we consider moving on to the next sommelier, and fitting in Whynot at a later date? I wasn’t able to find his/her participation since Week Three, so perhaps a loss of interest?
While we ponder our next move, I’d like to ask a few questions:
From what I have been able to determine from my reading, oenophiles will decant wines with lots of tannins in order to get the wine in contact with air; evidently this helps to mellow the wine. It certainly seems to be the case when I do it. But evidently cellaring certain wines does the same thing, and the tannins recede over time. So, does decanting a wine relieve the need for aging? I would think not, because otherwise no one would let a wine last longer than a year. What else happens over time that makes a great Bordeaux even better? And does the presence of lots of tannins indicate that the wine will be better with cellaring, or (as I suspect) is there more to it?
Agreed, we may need to skip to the next sommelier. Or, I’d be happy to jump in the queue and choose this week’s wine. 
I kinda sorta tried to answer some similar questions in GQ a few months back. I don’t think I was entirely successful at it though. I can offer what I’ve read and heard. Keep in mind I’m not a scientist or a winemaker or anything like that. The tough thing about this very subject is, as far as I can tell, even experts disagree or aren’t 100% sure about what is happening when a wine is aging in bottle.
My personal opinions:
Decanting does not relieve the need for aging. The presence of lots of tannins could be one potential indicator of a wine worth aging, but certainly not the only one, and not 100% of the time.
For reds, tannins are a major player in a wine’s age ability. But again, they are just one. It’s the perfect blend of all the other factors that make certain wines able to age better than others. Too much astringency due to overpowering tannins won’t necessarily disappear over time in the bottle, and if the balance of alcohol, acidity, sulfites, etc. is not in that ‘sweet spot’, aging won’t be much help.
What’s happening is known as polymerization - tannins and anthocyanins interact with small amounts of oxygen and join together, creating larger particles that fall out of the wine (sediment) and soften the astringency and mouthfeel while also changing the wine’s color and bouquet.
Decanting can help some young wines soften up, but it won’t replace the aging needed for a truly great wine. I very often find decanting helps many of my ‘drink now’ wines just by allowing some off odors to blow off (usually sulphur), letting more of the fruit/oak/earthy/etc. aromas and flavors to come through.
Most wines on the market aren’t meant for long term aging anyway, so for the average consumer that finds a particular wine a bit too harsh, decanting should help soften it a bit. But for the oenophile holding onto an expensive Bordeaux, decanting to replace aging won’t be the same, that bottle will need to age, and then be decanted to remove sediment.
That’s a simplified version. There’s some other stuff going on, but as far as I can tell that’s the key. There is a little more on the web, and I know I have more detailed info in some notebooks and texts at home if you have more questions.
Some links that might help:
As far as swapping/skipping/picking a new sommelier this week, I switched with Zsofia and it seemed to work fine. If we’re expecting to drink this one this weekend I say sure, let’s go ahead and do that.