Wine Rocks

Travel is one of the greatest perks in the wine business.  Typically when a person either represents a certain wine region as a buyer or as a salesperson they visit the vineyards, break bread with winemakers and of course taste the goods.  I could write forever about these life-changing trips, today is about ROCKS!  When packing my bags for wine trips, I most always leave a few extra pounds free to bring back a small token from the vineyards I walk through.  Besides the wines themselves, the vineyard rocks provoke an exact sense of place for many years to follow with just a glance.   A big glass bowl of  "wine rocks" acting as a centerpiece on our coffee table is a living-room staple.

The eight rocks above are the most recent addition to our home collection.  Big thanks to Eman for lugging this collection back for me!

1. Blue Slate - Mosel Erdener Treppchen
2. Mixture of crushed red slate, volcanic and limestone - Pflaz
3. Blue Schiste - Savennières
4. Silex - Pouilly Fume
5. Chalk - Sancerre
6. Red Slate - Mosel Urziger Wurzgarten
7. Soft Red Slate - Pfalz
8. Gray Schiste - Savennières

It's the little things such as rocks that bring the most interesting chit-chat to describing a bottle of wine, we often talk about the minerals and terroir of the land - this is where is begins. One of my favorite wine descriptors is "wet rock", you know, that smell of limestone or slate after a summer rainshower???  Wine Rocks, love them!  Cheers - Ali