May 11, 2006
How do you know it’s time to break open the Dry Rose? When your seven day forecast looks like this. Yesterday I decided to move up my official "Rose Break Out Day" from Memorial Day to, well, yesterday. The opening salvo in my attack on defining "pleasure" was a 2004 Ravenswood Rosato. It was cool, had a darkish hue, brimmed with early raspberry aromas and flavors and the requisite acid backbone necessary to be the quaffer it was designed as….
May 8, 2006
Despite the occassional rant about Americans drinking more and more high alcohol, sweet tasting wines, I do believe the American wine consumer is becoming more sophisticated in its taste for wine. Maybe we are just becoming more experimental. Maybe as a people we are embracing the notion of variety. Perhaps the best evidence of our growing sophistication is our steady embrace of German Riesling. According to Wines of German, a trade organization responsible for promoting the wines of German in…
May 2, 2006
I just get downright excited when I see something like this. Andrew Lane Wines has released a 2004 Napa Valley Gamay Noir. Do you know how rare this wine is? Charles Sullivan, the California wine industry’s unofficial historian, notes that there are no more than two acres of this grape reportedly planted in California…both in Napa Valley. Gamay Noir, also known as "Gamay Noir a jus blanc" is the grape responsible for that potentially very yummy, very refreshing very summerish…
Apr 24, 2006
"Hungaricum" A term, that after nearly 20 years in the wine industry, I’d never come across. It refers to the native and now terribly obscure grapes of Hungary, a country that is just now beginning to export it’s 2000 year-old winemaking heritage to the West, and the topic of Bruce Schoenfeld’s latest article in Travel & Leisure: "Wine’s Next Frontier". Travel & Leisure Magazine isn’t The Wine Spectator. And it surely isn’t Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. Yet it is the…
Apr 18, 2006
I’m a sucker for bomb throwers. That’s probably why I really liked reading Mike Steinberger’s article on Slate today entitled, "White Lies: Why Sauvignon Blanc is Overrated""Simply put, the grape (Sauvignon Blanc) is a dud, producing chirpy little wines wholly devoid of complexity and depth, the very qualities that make wine interesting and worth savoring. For years, this offensively inoffensive grape has escaped criticism while chardonnay and merlot have been scorned. The free ride ends here." Of course he’s wrong…