Jun 9, 2006
TEN THING…To Do To Get A High Caliber Wine Education 1. Get a job at a serious wine shop like K&L Wine Merchants or Zachys 2. Work in the Cellar at Robert Mondavi or Simi in the 1970s or 1980s 3. Agree to be Kermit Lynch’s Valet 4. Read the ten fattest wine books by English writers written in the past 20 years 5. Sell wine for a distributor in San Francisco or New York for 10 years 6. Spend…
Jun 7, 2006
I fell into a "Red State-Blue State" wine discussion the other day with a friend as we opened a few bottles of wine to try. When we opened and tasted a 1996 Sonoma Cabernet I was provoked to state, "Now, this is serious wine!" To which my tasting mate responded: "Serious? Where’s the fruit? Where’s the strength?" Indeed: Red State V. Blue State. To so many people today a wine is "serious" only when it delivers strength, girth, power, massiveness….
Jun 6, 2006
Wine magazines are often the host and sponsor of tasting events. But normally, when a wine magazine hosts a tasting, it’s a "Grand" event, or a "Great" event. The wines poured are usually among the most expensive and the highest rated. Wine & Spirits Magazine is proving again that it does things a bit different with the announcement of its "Hot Picks Tasting Tour". Beginning in Seattle on August 23, W&S’s Hot Picks events will feature 50 top rated wines…all…
Jun 5, 2006
For those of you in the San Francisco Bay Area (you know who you are) there is a very interesting tasting coming up next weekend. The Marin County Pinot Noir producers will be pouring their wines as a benefit for the Marin Agricultural Land Trust and as a way to speak the word about this region just south of Sonoma County that is beginning to churn out a decent supply of lovely Pinot Noir. MARIN COUNTY PINOT NOIR TASTING Friday…
Jun 1, 2006
For real wine lovers the act of "putting down" wines to age is not an exercise in possessing or building a bigger cache than the neighbor. It is foresight. It is about making an investment in time that is at once an optimistic act and also an act of faith that what your wine will evolve into after some years will be an altogether interesting, satisfying and intellectually inspiring wine. Charles Olken, the publisher of the Connoisseurs Guide to California…