Wine Blog for Sensible Appreciation: WineZag

Blind Tasting: Varied Styles of 2010 Northern Rhone Reds

One might assume having tasted ten Northern Rhone red wines from the same 2010 vintage and two new world 2010 Syrahs side-by-side, blind, that the Rhone wines showed as siblings while the two new world Syrahs tagged along as genetically distinct and adopted brothers. As our Boston tasting group discovered blind tasting the 2010 Northern Rhone vintage's cool spring, hot and cold summer, small yields, and long ripening that protected acids and allowed places of origin to shine through in each wine, stylistic commonality was in short supply. To make matters more complicated, we compared wines from various Northern Rhone appellations and ...

Josko Gravner Draws Amber Line in Orange Wine

Driving ever-so-slowly on the twisting road that meanders back and forth across the Slovenian/Italian border on the approach to Josko Gravner's home is advisable; it is the only reliable way to catch a landmark glimpse of the few spent giant amphoras serving as signposts to the home that Gravner's father raised him in and that Josko still lives and raises his own wines in. My son and tasting partner Alex made the non-trivial commitment to planes, trains, and automobiles starting out in Copenhagen, and me from Boston, to meet up in these drop-dead gorgeous rolling hills that are Friuli-Venezia Giulia's ground ...

Valentina Cubi Naturally Connects Valpolicella With Food

Breathing Quintarelli

La Subida: Friuli Venezia Giulia Taste Soloist

Walter Filipitti's book The Taste Soloist, heavily supported by Stefano Scatà's photography, will lure you closer to a Friuli Venezia Giulia visit and witnessing a powerful expression of ancestral driven wine and food culture. Photos, recipes, and tales featuring a cooperative of the region's best knife, cheese, prosciutto, vinegar, wine, and artisan food makers are perfect foils for a landscape of intoxicating rolling hills that eventually cozy up to the horizon's more distant Alps. As a local county agroindustrial councillor says in the book, "it's true that food expresses people's identity, but it is equally true, in my opinion, that it expresses ...

Collio Red Wine

White, not red, is the forgivable reflex for wine lovers contemplating Friuli-Venezia Giulia's Collio and Carso DOCs. Could a Collio red wine command attention? With the likes of Gravner, Radikon, Keber, Venica & Venica, Zidarich, Jermann, and more making global benchmark white, yellow, and orange wines in steels, woods, and amphoras from indigenous Ribolla Gialla, Friulano, Malvasia, Pinot Bianco, and Pinot Grigio fruit, why even consider attempts at international red varietals? Leaving the Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc to Bordeaux is also forgivable. Last week before leaving Boston for Northeast Italy, I spent a few hours at the Boston Wine School ...

Northeast Italy Wine and Food Trip

Next week WineZag (me) hits the roads of Northeast Italy's wine provinces. What else should an American father do when his Copenhagen-based-twenty-one-year-old son suggests joining up for some Italian wine and food immersion? Faced with a shrinking window for these father/son adventures at a stage of life that everyone warned comes too quickly, you count your blessings, pinch yourself hard, buy a plane ticket, and begin organizing a purposeful visit aimed at camaraderie, memory making, and mutual discovery. Italy, from head to heel-and-toe and then outward to its islands, has close to twenty distinct wine regions. More internationally popular Italian wines like Barbaresco, ...

Brachetto d’Acqui & Paso Robles Wines Connected?

The 2011 Pineto Brachetto d'Acqui and 2009 Bodegas Paso Robles Doña Blanca are wines of different worlds. Besides the fact Pineto's Brachetto d'Acqui is a sweet red sparkling wine from Italy's broader Piedmont region and Doña Blanca is a Grenache Blanc/Malvasia Bianca dry white central coast California wine, the Paso Robles produced Doña Blanca deepens their disconnect with a pair of grape varieties more commonly worked in Spain and France. While polarized by style, variety, and geography, they connect as two of the most surprising, captivating, and interesting wines I have recently discovered. The only other similarity are retail price tags ...

2009 Houillon Overnoy Poulsard and Pasta

Neither this wine nor pasta sauce are regulars on our table. The 2009 Houillon Overnoy Poulsard came via Louis/Dressner from the Jura, specifically Pupillin, where Emmanuel Houillon assumed winemaking duties at Pierre Overnoy's tiny estate. The pasta sauce relied on "cheater" duck broth and a prosciutto "heel". The entire meal including prep, cooking, uncorking, decanting, and plating took no more that 20 minutes to prepare following 54 years of regretful oversight. I have this habit of buying fatty "ends" of Prosciutto di Parma from Russo's in Watertown, MA. Russo's is a destination shopping mecca for fresh local vegetables (especially Asian), baked ...

2011 Beaujolais: Your Third Wake-Up Call

Go ahead and excuse yourself if just the mere thought of Beaujolais' currently released 2011 vintage does not generate anticipation nor enthusiasm. Burgundy's neighboring Beaujolais region developed its regional brand through decades of proliferating simple, thin, early released, confection tinged quaffing juice as Nouveau Beaujolais. While Nouveau raged with palates willing to overlook queer and immature wines, serious wine enthusiasts looked away while more than half of Beaujolais' production came to market in this unnatural form, frequently enough relying on chaptalization (sugar added to kick alcohols following fermentation) to overcome their immature fruit foundations. But as the Nouveau initiative is dying ...

Noma: New Normal In Perfect Dining

It is important to walk to Noma over city bridges and along waterfront streets to embrace Copenhagen's bone chilling winter. February Noma meals are miraculously conceived outdoors; natural bounties harvested, pickled, smoked, or dried in step with a harsh Scandinavian winter calendar. Only then are they skillfully nurtured into a series of intellectually compelling courses indoors at the 18th century waterside warehouse restaurant that pays hommage to the building's historical inhabitants who likewise processed whale and cod yielded by the same aquatic resources. Transporting yourself to Noma insulated by taxi, bus, or metro will just mask half of the Noma ...

Noma Copenhagen 2/20/13 Playlist

Noma is Copenhagen, Copenhagen is Noma. They are intertwined the way musicians reflect root and spontaneous influences. For us, we are in the middle of both; five days of frosty, windswept, Nordic Copenhagen and two meals at its geographic mirror called Noma. All of it feels severe and subtle, cozy and edgy, intellectual yet simple, bare but rich, soothing while cutting. Wintertime Noma and Copenhagen emit chords that are both skin deep and penetrating to the core. It all takes time to process. When I used to go to Grateful Dead shows, they were universally defined the day after by setlists, ...

Amsterdam Wine and Food

While food and wine still do not rank as keywords for Amsterdam's travel websites, it is time to cut the canal city some slack. Visiting Amsterdam as a young man in the 1980's and 90's conjured immersive travel images of great contrast to the Amsterdam we experienced this weekend. While our first day was reserved for battling jetlag and the kaleidoscope of Amsterdam memories that were perfect for another time long ago, this weekend was drawn up for serious food and wine exploration. This visit is driven by a craving for the growing local and natural food and wine culture spreading ...

Three Top California Cabernets and Taste Buds

Thirty five of us climbed a stairway to our balcony seating perched above Cole's Chop House's main dining room in downtown Napa. The wine service table was crowded with a military style line up of thirty bottles of three different California Cabernets; an admittedly and deliberately ignored wine category since a self-imposed hard stop in the mid 1990's. 2009 O'Shaughnessy Cabernet Sauvignon, Howell Mountain ($158 list price) 2008 King's Row Cabernet Sauvignon, Diamond Mountain ($195 list price) 2010 Herold "By Mark Herold Wines" Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa ($176 list price) All three are impressive and remarkable specimens, making me glad Jim Gallagher, Cole's Wine Director, ...

Kathryn Kennedy and California Wine

Much of the criticism aimed at California wines’ big style and bulging price tags is routinely sidestepped in old world wine producing regions. Although the extent of this is up for debate...history, subsidy, tradition, terroir, appellation controls, experience, and older vineyards form layers of insulation that restrain old world vignerons from the temptations of market and style trends. Does Napa Valley Cabernet have a predetermined and different destiny than Cabernet from old world regions? While big, rich, fruity birthmarks with in-your-face flavor appeal dominate the California wine scene, it does not seem to have always been that way. Back in 1973 ...

Latest Posts

Blind Tasting: Varied Styles of 2010 Northern Rhone Reds

If you're new here at WineZag, you may want to subscribe to regular tips and stories for sensible wine enthusiasm using WineZag's RSS & email feeds. Thanks for visiting! One might assume having tasted ten Northern Rhone red wines from the same 2010 vintage and two new world 2010 Syrahs side-by-side, blind, that the Rhone wines showed as siblings while the two new world Syrahs tagged along as genetically distinct and adopted brothers. As our Boston tasting group discovered blind tasting the 2010 Northern Rhone vintage’s cool spring, hot and cold summer, small yields, and long ripening that protected acids and allowed places of origin to shine through in each wine, stylistic commonality was in short supply. To make matters more complicated, we compared wines from various Northern Rhone appellations and added two ringers just for fun and context: Northern Rhone: Colombier, Hermitage $60 Souhaut, Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet, (Near Hermitage) $30 Chave, Estate, St. Joseph $60... [Read more of this review]

Josko Gravner Draws Amber Line in Orange Wine

Driving ever-so-slowly on the twisting road that meanders back and forth across the Slovenian/Italian border on the approach to Josko Gravner’s home is advisable; it is the only reliable way to catch a landmark glimpse of the few spent giant amphoras serving as signposts to the home that Gravner’s father raised him in and that Josko still lives and raises his own wines in. My son and tasting partner Alex made the non-trivial commitment to planes, trains, and automobiles starting out in Copenhagen, and me from Boston, to meet up in these drop-dead gorgeous rolling hills that are Friuli-Venezia Giulia’s ground zero for overly expressive wines made from local indigenous grapes. This small stretch of road was the final lap and we would not let Josko Gravner off the hook until we understood more about what made his compelling orange wines different from all others. So, it was important to me that we made friends, and that part came together nicely. To get there without any... [Read more of this review]

Valentina Cubi Naturally Connects Valpolicella With Food

It is debatable whether Amarone, or even Valpolicella, have ever occupied a comfortably suitable spot on the dinner table. These combinations of dried Corvina, Rondinella, and Molinara grapes can easily overwhelm most dishes with raisin-prune flavors, powerful concentration, oak, high alcohol, and heat. There are acceptable food pairing exceptions like Gorgonzola and other strong cheeses, for example. And there are exceptional producers, such as Quintarelli, where pricey wines are tamed into submission over extended periods of years inside oversized oak barrels. So, it is of no small consequence that quietly from her modest ten hectares of naturally farmed vineyards near the village of Fumane inside the Valpolicella’s viticulture zone, retired schoolteacher Valentina Cubi is upending Corvina’s legacy for mealtime woes. For too many years, bulk Valpolicella wines made from varied combinations of these grape varieties were bottled as insipid and thin $5 pizza-quaffers. Many Valpolicella... [Read more of this review]

Breathing Quintarelli

Alex pointed towards a hilltop as we entered the valley town of Negrar and I respectfully inhaled a first breath of Quintarelli air. We were on our way to visit Francesco Grigoli, Guiseppe Quintarelli’s grandson. Climbing a series of switchback roads and white knuckle turns landed us at a modest home sitting atop the cellars that had been ground zero for Guiseppe Quintarelli’s work, and now for the rest of his family that is capably embracing his legacy. We parked in front of an open kitchen door releasing wafts of reducing ragu that lured us closer. Franca Quintarelli, Guiseppe’s surviving wife and Francesco’s grandmother, flashed us her buddha-like smile. After brief introductions, she slowly waved her arms across the hillside, valley, mountains, and horizon that her family’s wines embody and provides eternal calm to the Quintarelli family kitchen she commands. No wonder her door is always open: And from the kitchen door, she could keep an eye on... [Read more of this review]

La Subida: Friuli Venezia Giulia Taste Soloist

Walter Filipitti’s book The Taste Soloist, heavily supported by Stefano Scatà’s photography, will lure you closer to a Friuli Venezia Giulia visit and witnessing a powerful expression of ancestral driven wine and food culture. Photos, recipes, and tales featuring a cooperative of the region’s best knife, cheese, prosciutto, vinegar, wine, and artisan food makers are perfect foils for a landscape of intoxicating rolling hills that eventually cozy up to the horizon’s more distant Alps. As a local county agroindustrial councillor says in the book, “it’s true that food expresses people’s identity, but it is equally true, in my opinion, that it expresses a community of those who produce…and those who consume as well.” One of the soloists, La Subida, was our home during an attempt to join in this expression of identity through consumption. In Boston we always enjoy eating at home because the food and wine becomes our own expression of... [Read more of this review]

Collio Red Wine

White, not red, is the forgivable reflex for wine lovers contemplating Friuli-Venezia Giulia’s Collio and Carso DOCs. Could a Collio red wine command attention? With the likes of Gravner, Radikon, Keber, Venica & Venica, Zidarich, Jermann, and more making global benchmark white, yellow, and orange wines in steels, woods, and amphoras from indigenous Ribolla Gialla, Friulano, Malvasia, Pinot Bianco, and Pinot Grigio fruit, why even consider attempts at international red varietals? Leaving the Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc to Bordeaux is also forgivable. Last week before leaving Boston for Northeast Italy, I spent a few hours at the Boston Wine School at an energetic Ribera Del Duero seminar and tasting. Jonathan Alsop runs the school and every time I am with Jonathan, he says something simple about wine that lands with profound resonance. This time Jonathan opened the seminar for thirty wine writers and members of the New England trade saying, “we study Bordeaux... [Read more of this review]