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| Tablas Creek is good wine! Smart kitty |
This wine lore comes from Spain; I heard it from a longtime producer in Utiel-Requena.
In winter, cats seek warm places in the winery for a nap. If a winery ferments its wine in barrels, the wine that ferments the slowest will eventually give the richest, most complex flavor. This barrel will be warm in December, maybe even into January, after the others have finished fermentation.
Therefore, the best barrel of wine is the one where you find the cat napping.
Of course, this wisdom of the 19th century works only at old-style wineries using native yeast. Though I love the idea of Kendall-Jackson employing cheetahs to sniff around its giant stainless steel tanks of Chardonnay, you can't really scale up feline wine technology.
Once you start dumping baggies of yeast into the wine, there's no room for cats.
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Our late, great cat Moose used to lick the inside of the rims of our wine glasses when we weren't looking, but only the glasses with chardonnay, no other whites and no reds. He passed on last summer at the age of 16 -- further proof that wine is good for one's health.
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