Friday Find, December 6th

Each Friday we highlight a wine from the Northwest that we think is a real "find." By find we might mean that it's a steal, as all of these wines we'll feature weekly are at or under $20. We might also mean "Hey, you really need to go find this" and it might be a wine that we feel not enough people know about. In any case, with the weekend pending we're hoping to help you "find" a wine to kickoff the weekend right. We'll tell you a little bit about the wine and try to help you track it down here in the Northwest. 

The biggest story right now is of course the passing of Nelson Mandela, and while I feel like talking about it, I feel the man deserves better than to be the subject of a weekly wine blog post on wines for a good value. So, I'm going with something else. A book I just read.

I just recently finished reading David Walsh's book Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong. Walsh has long been the foil for Armstrong and was the one guy, well, there were others (not many) but he had the loudest mouth, who never believed the Armstrong myth. 

As an American cyclist who like most, if not all of us wanted to believe the Armstrong myth, the Walsh book is an incredible behind the scenes look at what he experienced as the Doubting Thomas of cycling journalism. Rough treatment certainly from the Armstrong camp, but also pariah status from fellow journalists. His biggest book, LA Confidentiel, I spelled it like that on purpose, it only ever came out in France, and in French. So most of us never read it, but it was the first look at many of the truths that would bring Lance down. 

The new book is a painful chronicle of Walsh's time as the one guy working at a major newspaper who was both telling, and concerned with the truth. He was sued successfully by Armstrong and his management team, and of course, the outcome of that will be revisited in court. As a reader and someone who was closely following Armstrong's Tour de France dominance, and believing much of it at the time, the Walsh book leaves me feeling guilty. Not for being duped, that's something I figured out about 4 or 5 years ago and have moved past where Lance is concerned, but feeling guilty about how Walsh found himself so maligned. 

The book is only slightly a "I told you so." I mean frankly, you have to admire Walsh's restraint, he was right, and almost everyone else was wrong, and he was so certain about it. For that, he like others who doubted the golden boy paid a dear price in terms of work, financial penalty and reputation. I recommend the book if you have even a passing interest in what happened with Lance Armstrong and his doping scandal.

Today's Friday Find is not controversial, nor will one find oneself maligned by singing it's praises, quite the opposite in fact. The Redd Brand Red Wine 2008 (a Bordeaux style blend with Cab, Merlot, Malbec, Petit Verdot, etc, all of them) from the folks at Tertulia Cellars. Their goal with this wine, there are others as well, is to give folks a quality wine at a really approachable price. In warm vintages especially there may be some exquisite left over fruit that makes it into a second label like this. This wine is certainly a velveteen red blend with smoke, dust and dried figs on the aromatics, and a luxuriant palate with mocha, toast, black fruits and pepper to finish. You'll find it in the $15 range in shops like Esquin or Wine World. The label also has some single vineyard Grenache and I believe Tempranillo so look for those as well, they're all in this price range.