Mar 1, 2007
My email box tends to be full most of the time. Not as full as others, but full enough. The cool thing about FERMENTATION is that most people who want to write an email about something I’ve written tend to just post a comment. But sometimes they send an emal and don’t comment. Sometimes they don’t leave a name either. Sometimes there vocabulary is, well, descriptive. For example: "You and your F*cking wine blog awards can kiss my wine-drinking ass….
Feb 27, 2007
Were there any surprises at the Oscars this year? I don’t thinks so. Pobably because there was no single film that so towered over the others in hype and talk. When you’ve got those in the mix there is a real opportunity for upsets. This was the first year in 10 that our house was not the scene of a multi-TV Oscars party. Instead we went to the home of a friend with about 8 others for a wine and…
Feb 5, 2007
I had a very interesting wine this weekend that, happily, made me think. It was a "Sonoma County Merlot. Vintage 2003. Price: $32.00. It was a wine that stood out for one main reason: It had noticeable "herbal" qualities in the nose that was followed up by the same slightly "green" character on the palate. These days there seems to be very few rules in the winemaking business. But there is one steadfast rule: AVOID GREEN HINTS IN YOUR WINE…
Jan 24, 2007
For those of us that believe Californian wines have tended toward the overly extracted, alcoholic and bombastic over the past decade or so, there is always the hope that the tide will turn; that the pendulum will swing in the other direction toward more restraint and balance. We are looking for signs. I found a promising sign. Such a sign is likely to come from someone who tastes lots of wine and who also has noticed the tendency (rush?) toward…
Jan 2, 2007
I take from Dan Berger’s latest article at Appellation America ("Why Terroir is Essential to Wine Evaluation") that it is becoming easier and easier to be a highly competant judge of wine or wine reviewer. As Dan points out: "regionality is not automatically a part of most American wine judges’ psyche. Weight, richness, and “hedonistic” appreciation of a wine’s flavors seem far more the dominant aspects of most evaluations we see or read about." Dan’s point is a fairly simple…