Saldo, and other tales from the Wine Country

And it's not where you expected!

Moving to South Dakota was supposed to be about Indian ways and "going back to the garden." It still is. Interestingly, the intersection has taken me to a wine country no one would have expected. South Dakota.

Where the grapes have to struggle to survive, and wine is made bent by the seasons. It's the real deal. Wine is a fifteen hundred year old tradition, so I'm not suffering to listen to the grapes a while, to learn their stories.

And it's a great way to get to know good people.

The job I found (that in its own way found me as well, by considering me in the position of Tasting Room Manager at a Winery) has put me smack in the middle of wine-talk and education. From coffee to wine. Yup. Though I don't have to think too hard to recognize that managing the Wine & Cheese at Think for three years has something to do with this evolution. It's interesting, because we were 100% International in our selection.

Here in the "Great West!" the land of the free home of the brave, the wine is all American. Comparisons are likely to be Californian, and grape talk is divided into three categories: California, Washington, and Midwest. (Little mention of East Coast grapes though I'm anticipating learning the subtlety of what I'm sure has merit in some way).

In some ways, this Americ-centric view of wine is good because it is about local/regional and even indigenous plant life.

So a lot to learn, still, so much to learn.

I've taken it upon myself to buy one bottle of wine each week in the name of education. I was recommended to a fantastic wine shop in Rapid City called Smiths, whose owner, Tim Smith, has pointed me in the right direction on my first two visits.

I had been invited to a gathering in honor of spring, the May Beltane, and Sauvignon Blancs were in order. Tim suggested Kim Crawford's. Which I would discover is the "it" word for good wine. Everybody knows Kim Crawford. My vocabulary stops at grassy, for now anyway, and grassy was satisfying to me. Man did that wine pop.

We had our photographs taken, and I carefully drove home passing deer and other wild animals in the night.

~~~

The next week, I was back at Smiths, this time for myself. So dry red it would be. Tim offered his help, though I wanted to wander a bit before honing in on my selection. Eventually, it would be his staff pic card that drew my attention to Saldo, a very special Zinfandel (I'm still ignorant enough in wine to think Zinfandel could only be white. Is it a mutually exclusive fact that all wine is ultimately from a red or gray grape, it's just a matter of how long the skin is in contact with the juice that makes it white or red? More details on that at some future date).

Saldo, I pointed out the second time Tim came by, was what I was considering.
"The two bottles are the last I'll be able to get," he explained, and I was sold.

Back at home, I tried it out with some gouda cheese, and one glass into it I was buzzing! What a wine. I seem to remember his card mentioning a full mouthful without being too overbearing. True, true.

Of course as fate would decree, not two days later at work, what should come up, but Saldo! The real wine nerds at the winery have a wine club, which commits me to 6 bottles at a time (at wholesale prices) so I'm thinking I'll actually start a wine collection. And Saldo just may be our first order.