May 26, 2006
I’m a fan of Wikipedia. I like the idea of a constantly updating encyclopedia at my fingertips, despite the rap that it gets from some (traditionalists?) that it’s not accurate. While my go to source for general wine info is still the Oxford Companion to Wine, edited by Jancis Robinson, as well as a few other atlas’, Wikipedia has begun to take over some of my mindspace. It has its downfalls for sure. For example, it can’t come close to…
May 23, 2006
Marketers, like myself, get a lot of the blame for taking the authenticity out of wine and lowering the beverage to just one more product to be foisted upon the public with exaggerated claims and pretty pictures. There’s a lot of truth to that kind of accusation. However, the winemakers and grape growers in Mendocino have rightly determined that more marketing is just what the doctor ordered. The growers and winemakers of Mendocino County, located about 70 miles north of…
May 18, 2006
In its continued quest to deliver identity to North America’s varied appellations and the wines made from them, Appellation America has recently posted the results of two of its "Discovery Tastings": Spring Mountain District in the Napa Region and Yorkville Highlands in Mendocino County. For those unfamiliar with Appellation America’s Discovery Tastings, the organization brings together winemakers focused on the appellation under consideration to be guided through a tasting of the appellation’s wines The Discovery Tastings are undertaken blind (meaning…
May 8, 2006
I think I’ve finally concluded that in the Old World (Europe) "Terroir" is really "tradition". The European wines from different appellations, large and small, that you drink tend to have a consistent and particular characteristic not because the climate and soil from that appellation force upon the wine a particular character, but because there are a set of traditional winemaking and grape growing techniques in an area that lead the wines in a particular direction. Those traditions relate to how…
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…