A little wine – Cakebread Cellars

       One of our reps brought someone from Cakebread Cellars by today. I have been suffering from Cakebread fatigue for the last year. Like Sonoma Cutrer, they have stamped a not entirely undeserved claim to mid range chardonnay superiority. It’s not that I’m tired of being asked if we offer their chard, it’s that I’m tired of the exasperation and surprise on the face of those who reply “but it’s the best.” There are a lot of those people. I’m being a shitfaced snob here because I realize that as a restaurant we want to give people what they want, but I taste 20 – 30 wines a week and have found better, cheaper chards than Cakebread. Cakebread delivers a very nice wine and people have come to accept that the name is synonymous with quality, primarily because of the accolades their high end cabs have garnered. I’m a guy in a tie saying try something you’ve never heard of. Who you gonna trust.
       Anyway, we tried the 06 sauvignon blanc, the 06 Napa chard, and the 04 Napa cab. 
       The sauv. blanc was the winner. It has a little citrus on the nose and nice fruit throughout. I usually feel that California sauv. blanc falls flat. This does not. The chard was as expected: very good, but not up to the hype. The bottle we tasted was a little warm so I’m expecting that it will be crisper when properly chilled. The cab was overly lactic and bound to dissapoint those who have had the Benchland Select.
       I bought the sauv. blanc and the chard. I’m tired of fighting it. I’m also tired of fighting the urge to write “let them drink Cakebread” no matter how corny it sounds, so I did.
        
      

We got one.

      Mark Ingram has commited to Alabama. I’m a little busy at work right now, but the Capstone Report put up some info on him this morning.

Free skoolin’ kids. Come n’ get it.

        – National signing day eve is upon us and while some are able to overcome the myopia of absurd fandom and focus on what is really important, others are not. Rivals.com currently ranks our recruiting class #3 in the nation and Scout.com has us at #1. To point out the obvious, we aren’t done yet. Julio Jones and Jarrel Harris look to be strong Bama leaners and Mark Ingram is slated to announce today at 2:30 CST. 
          Assuming we get none of the uncommited players the class is still the best we’ve seen in years. But that’s loser talk. Assuming we get Julio Jones, we send the message to the rest of DIV 1 saying that we have locked down our state. Assuming we get Mark Ingram, we send the message that we are a national recruiter. Excitement abounds. The word “assuming” placed here makes it look less like I have a limited vocabulary and more like I wanted a diagonal line of the same word cutting from left to right through this paragraph. My fellow freemasons understand the code and will begin Pay no attention to it.
          A quick note on the ESPN/Luginbill rankings. On Finebaum yesterday Luginbill says he ranks Bama’s class around #7 or #8 and that even the addition of Julio etc. would not put us at #1 in his eyes. He’s entitled to his opinion and maybe he knows something that I don’t. That being said, this business of ranking is speculative. In the wine world there are at least one or two wines per year that are ranked 98+ by two of the big three (Parker, Tanzer, and Wine Spectator) and then given a moderate-we-don’t-see-what-the-big-deal-is score by the third. The idea is to call attention to yourself and appear more decerning/knowledgeable than your peers in a subjective exercize. No one can ever say you are wrong. It’s not fair to assume that that is what he’s doing. I don’t know the guy and don’t mean to disparage him, even though by mentioning this possibility I am tarring him. I just want everyone to acknowledge the astonishing Sabanation taking place in Tuscaloosa. Forget I said anything. He’s great.