12 posts tagged “wine photos”

A couple old shots that were never processed, dug out of the archives:

This is a wine magazine based in Istanbul, Turkey:

I was one of a handful of photographers featured in this article about wine photography: (large photo on left is mine)

 

Winter is definitely settling in here in the northwest, with snow in the forecast (a rarity in the Willamette Valley). Perfect weather for digging back into summer archives for a look at some refreshing rosé on a hot afternoon.

Wine photography by Donald Gruener available as royalty-free stock exclusively vi iStockphoto:
Royalty-Free Stock Wine Photos by Donald Gruener on Stockphoto

Learn more about my wine photography on my website:
www.donaldgruener.com/wine

Some new shots... all colors, vignetting, & effects created in-camera:

To celebrate our 11th anniversary, my wife and I got away, just the two of us, for a rare meal without the kids. We enjoyed our food in the intimate little courtyard at The Vintage, which is cozy and charming with vines of kiwi and grape draped all over the stucco walls.

The grapes on their vine were ripe and ready...and wow, could you smell them. That familiar scent just made me want to be out in the vineyards, at dawn or at the end of the day, looking for images to capture.

Alas, it has been a crazy month, and numerous projects have made it impossible for me to get back out since the very brief visit through northern Willamette Valley pinot country some weeks ago. I was still holding out hope even a week ago but now I realize it just isn't going to happen anytime soon, at least not before the fields are harvested.

Craving new grape photos, I did the next best thing - I dug into last September's archives and found a few raw images I hadn't processed. Not quite as exciting or satisfying as being out shooting new work, but the way this month has been going, it's amazing I've even managed to work on these year-old shots.

The best stuff from last September was of course long ago processed and posted, so these maybe aren't the height of wine photo artistry...but still good useful stock.

The other day, someone asked me why their favorite wine now had a screw top instead of a cork. Indeed, it's getting harder to judge a wine by its closure these days, as more and more quality vintners are bypassing tradition in favor of reliability.

It seems that screw tops are gaining respect as closure on good wines, because they eliminate the very real possibility of bottles ruined by cork taint. Something like 5% of wines closed with cork end up being damaged or destroyed to some extent by the cork (bouchonné, as the French say). Statistically speaking, you have no doubt drank wine that was bouchonné, perhaps without actually realizing the cork was the reason the wine was disappointing.

 So you can see the appeal of a closure that provides a guarantee against having good wine ruined by bad cork.

That said, there is definitely a part of the ritual missing when you just screw the cap off. It feels somehow wrong to not have real cork be there as it has been done for centuries, but then I remind myself: cork was traditionally used because it was the best closure technology at the time. If there were well-machined screw tops and/or plastic composite corks available 500 years ago, you better believe the winemakers would have used them instead of something so unpredictable as natural cork.

Here's a somewhat tangental but interesting read over on Vinography regarding the cork industry and the WWF: Uh oh. Screwcaps Will Ruin the Planet

Do you have a dedicated wine cellar? Do you manage it well?

I wish I could answer yes to both, but I can't.

My "cellar" consists of nothing more than a cheap pine rack from Ikea in a dark, cool corner of the basement, where I store the daily drinkers and accumulate special bottles that will only be opened on the right occasion.

I don't manage it well at all.

The problem I have is that I never seem to find the right occasion to open those special bottles. When friends come over to dine, they usually show up with a nice bottle in hand, so we open that. Usual weeknight dinners are often rushed or interrupted by our fussy baby - not exactly ideal circumstances to be savoring a fine wine - and the midweek meals themselves, while usually healthy and tasty, are also usually simple and unrefined and rarely deserving of a truly great wine.

As each holiday season approaches, I swear I'm going to open this or that special bottle on Christmas Day or New Years Eve, but the whirlwhind from Thanksgiving to New Years is so exhausting that come the day, I'm feeling so fatigued that I worry I won't truly appreciate the bottle for all it's worth.

So there they sit, month after month, year after year, on the lower shelves of my rack, while above them younger cheaper bottles come and go with clock-like regularity. Occasionally their ranks grow as a new bottle of special wine is acquired, but unfortunately my wine budget is small enough that new acquisitions are rare, and it makes me hesitate to actually open those really good, expensive bottles.

Okay, wine is supposed to age. But many wines aren't supposed to age this much.

So stupidly, sadly, I've got extremely good wines that I've been saving for "just the right occasion" for so long that they are almost certainly past their prime. Wines I tasted, years back, that I just had to possess - and then have never enjoyed. Nice bottles that were received as gifts that I would never have splurged on myself, that I don't even know if they're spectactular or not...but in my mind they are.  

Well, maybe there is some value in that? Maybe, for a wine enthusiast who, like me, is on a low budget, the pleasure is simply the anticipation of enjoying that extra fine bottle on just the right occasion...knowing that sitting down there in my "cellar" is my proud little collection - a collections I'll no longer have if I actually drink it.

Hmm. On second thought, no, that's just not right either.

I'm going to open them, and drink them. Very soon. Fairly soon. Really.

Just as soon as the right occasion comes up.

My latest addition to the iStock collection:

With the flowing wine softly blurred and indistinct,
it's kind of a departure from my usual approach to pour shots.