Archive for the ‘Wine Education’ Category
Last night at a dinner celebrating my father-in-law’s birthday, a couple glasses of a nice, refreshing Vinho Verde quite nicely got me through a three course meal of Caesar Salad, a three meat stew which "clearly calls for a robust red, my good man," and dessert of Tapioca and sorbet. It was a nice restaurant in Sonoma: La Sallette. Had the wait staff been inexperienced or the company I was with any way inclined to "demonstrate" their gastronomic knowledge, I’d…
How could it be that nearly every alcohol-related law and regulation across America favors the interests of a small number of middlemen called "Wholesalers" or "Distributors? Consider for example the various laws across the country that attempt to restrict consumers from purchasing and have shipped to them wine except from smaller wineries that produce only small amount of wine and in effect forcing medium and large wineries to sell to a middleman in order to get their wines to market…
On the occasion of the 264th Birthday of America’s First Wine Lover, FERMENTATIONS is very happy to present this essay by James M. Gabler. Gabler is the author of Passions: The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson and An Evening with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson: Dinner, Wine, and Conversation. Gabler is the foremost authority on Jefferson and his relationship with wine. We highly recommend both books noted above to anyone with a love of wine, history or both. Thomas…
Who’s to say? That’s the question that Ryan over at CalWineriesBlog asks about whether a wine is good or bad or average. It’s a good question. His answer is is YOU. That is, if you are drinking the wine all that really matters is what you think of it. But this is really beside the point. The real question is who’s opinion will you take in helping decide if you buy a wine? While I subscribe to the idea that…
So I’m sitting around a table listening to Will Bucklin, Jeff Gaffner, and Joel Peterson have a conversation. What do they all have in common? You’d be hard pressed to find three people who have a more hands-on and theoretical knowledge of Old Vine, Field Blend Zinfandels from Sonoma Valley. I was at the table just for the ride. There was a writer there too who was interviewing the three of them for a story. But you wouldn’t have known…
