Nov 4, 2011
There is and has for a long time been an inclination among some to treat wine as art. Oftentimes we see the winemaker referred to as the artist. The wine itself is regularly referred to as an artistic creation. I'm often inclined to wince at these descriptions of wine and its making primarily because wine is not art, winemakers are not artists and the label "art" applied to wine seems an affectation of sorts to me. And yet, there is…
Nov 1, 2011
The Top 10 Places To Buy Wine in Napa Valley Conventional wisdom among Wine Country visitors looking for the “good stuff” is you must go directly to the winery where they store and sell their really rare and hard-to-find bottlings. While Wine Country tourists are often rewarded by their on-premise search for great and rare wines, there is in fact a much more efficient and reliable way for visitors to Napa Valley to get their hands on the finest and…
Oct 25, 2011
Santa Cruz Mountain Pinot Noirs are really very pretty wines. They tend toward the elegant rather than bold, mineral over leafy, cherry over berry. These wines, based on my tasting of a selection primarily from the 2008 and 2009 vintage, possess a forward acid structure, evident but not overwhelming tannins and are capable of carrying a broad and complex set of flavors from the front to back of the palate. But most of all, they are Pinot Noir. This last…
Oct 24, 2011
I don't want to tell you how much time I've spent playing with GoogleEarth and GoogleMaps. It's one of the most amazing timesucks on the Internet. However, I'm pretty sure I've not spent as much time with this enormous source of geo-information as Daniel Opalacz, the creator of Vinosum.com Suppose you wanted to know what vineyards Siduri uses to source grapes for their single vineyards wines. Vinosum. Suppose you wanted a mapped out display of Syrah vineyards in Santa Barbara…
Oct 17, 2011
As reported by Dr. Vino, California’s Sea Smoke Cellars out of Santa Rita Hills has placed the following wording on six of their 2009 vintage labels and on one 2008 Sparkling Wine label: “CALIFORNIA GRAND CRU” This is, in my mind, the most audacious packaging move I’ve ever seen a California wine ever make. According to the good Dr., Sea Smoke explained its unique new labeling message by referencing a March 2008 blog post at the WineSpectator.com in which Jim…