Archive for the ‘Wine Places’ Category
It appears that Canadians are set to solve their wine shipping dilemma in one fell swoop: legislation is likely to pass that will finally allow Canadian wine lovers to have wines shipped to them across provinces, a simple thing that has been banned since 1928. Canada went through its own Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s. It lasted for a shorter time than here in America and most laws were repealed by the end of the decade. But one legacy…
Something happened on the way to the the 2nd Annual "West of the West Wine Festival": Fort Ross-Seaview, a new American Viticultural Area, was approved by the Federal Government and further refined the meaning of the region celebrated and promoted by a band of California vintners dedicated to the idea that reality is better than fantasy. First, the fantasy: The Sonoma Coast American Viticultural Area. This monumentally large and meaningless federally approved appellation encompasses more than 500,000 acres in the…
Napa Valley and Sonoma County are neighbors, separated largely by a mountain. From southern Napa Valley, from its mid point in Saint Helena and from Calistoga, you can get to the major cities in Sonoma County in half an hour or less. And yet, they remain worlds apart culturally. This point was driven home once again when I attended the Wine Spectator's Napa Valley "Big Bottle" Party at Tra Vigna in Saint Helena last Wedenesday. This annual affair, which is…
Some truths are uncomfortable. The Experts Are the Best Sources of Wine Info and RecommendationsThe tendancy to disparage "wine experts" or "wine elite" grows as the role of social media and peer reviews grow. Yet the fact remains that the experts are the best and most reliable source of information on wine. Folks like Eric Asimov, Robert Parker, Jim Laube, Jancis Robinson, Steve Heimoff, Charles Olken, Dan Berger, Lettie Teague, Jon Bonne and other well known experts are the one's…
Over at The Eater, Talia Baiocchi is a bit offended, or at least disheartened, that America's most powerful wine buyer doesn't believe that wine is much more special than toilet paper or tin foil. Talia, a keen observer of the wine world and a very good marketer, has reason to be offended by this. Talia's moment of virtual head-shaking comes in response to a CNBC video featuring Annette Alvarez-Peters, Costco's head wine buyer, who responds to an interviewer's query about…
