Friday Find, June 7th

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.

Hybrids are wunderbar. 

Well, let's clarify that. Not all hybrids are equally wunderbar, but some of them certainly are.  Hybrid cars are a crafty combination of electric and gasoline engines that allow you to save gasoline. Hybrid dogs let those of us with dog allergies enjoy the life changing comforts of owning a pooch without suffering the anti-histamine attacks of our bodies immune systems and hybrid wine grapes, created over time as a way to survive pests, mold or to better survive the weather of a particular region allowed wine growers to try and tackle the challenges of growing grapes in a particular region.  Hybridization is a genetic manipulation process.

There are crazy hybrids in biology in the animal kingdom, like the Liger, the Jaglion or the Zeedonk, a hybrid of a donkey and a zebra. Not to be confused with the Honkey Tonk Badonkadonk. Which is a hybrd cross between country music and a big butt.   



Not all hybrids are so wunderbar though. You may recall this idea that came about in the late 90s through early 00s when bands started being formed as a combination of hip hop and rock music. A hybrid if you will. Bands with names like Limp Bizkit, Shootys Groove, Linkin Park. These bands ranged from somewhere between terrible and hot garbage. While wine grapes allow us to see the genetic parents of the resulting hybrid, only those of us who were paying attention in the 90s can point to the parents of this bastardization of music. I'll let you in on a little secret, it was Onyx and Biohazard. Their "collabo" on the Onyx hit Slam eventually snowballed into what was to become one of the worst musical ideas of all time. And while it worked for them, it would not work for the many that followed.  

Today's Friday Find is one of my favorite wine hybrids, Müller-Thurgau. It's one that does fairly well generally and here in the Northwest you can find it being made into sparkling wine, or as a still wine a high acid, fruit forward wine that pairs well with food or makes for great warm weather drinking. Such is the 2011 Kramer Vineyards Müller. The variety that was created by a Swiss botanist and has come to find a home in the WIllamette Valley as well as the San Juan Islands in Washington.  The Kramer Müller-Thurgau has super zippy acidity and great aromatics of apricots and early season peaches. The wine was done in all stainless and so it retains that fresh fruit character and lots of zing. Great fruit flavors and acid carry out the palate.  For $12 how could you not give this hybrid a test drive? The Kramer wines are pretty available in Oregon and you can ping them on twitter to track the wines down in your area @kimkramerwine. 

Posted in: honky tonk badonkadonk,hybrids,Kramer Vineyards,liger,Muller Thugau,what happened to the group Onyx,wine hybrids,zeedonk