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Napa Valley Wine Visit: Making It Small

I have not enjoyed my visits to Napa Valley in the same way I did in the early 1980’s.  So, I have been asking myself if I am excited to be heading back to the Napa wine scene today after a purposely extended hiatus and so many years of waning interest in another visit to my interpretation of the “Disneyland of wine culture”?  Ornate tasting rooms to seal off the real guts of a winery, tinted limo windows to hide the drunken loads they carry, pretty labels and bottles to mask pours of mediocre wine, handsome young tasting room staff to anesthetize against regrettable price escalation, gorgeous mountain and valley terrain downplaying tourist traffic creeping up and down valley border roads, and all else that camouflages any essence or connection to an authentic, indigenous, local wine culture and its people. I prepared myself for this return visit using some skills I taught players during my ice hockey coaching days, “Keep the game small”.  Hockey is a series of one-on-ones, two-on-twos, two-on-ones, and... [Read more of this review]

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Clos Rougeard Saumur-Champigny 2005: Best Wine This Year

I am fortunate to taste more than one man’s fair share of special wine every month.  Tonight, in the context of a business dinner at Momofuku Ssam Bar with a young, smart, scrappy, web marketing guru from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, we experienced the most compelling red wine I have tasted this year, and most probably one of the top ten recent release wines that have ever touched my lips.  It comes from the Loire, in limited quantity, and more specifically, is the entry level bottling crafted at the venerable estate run by brothers Nadi and Charlie Foucault.  This bottle served as vessel to an expression of Cabernet Franc I had never dreamed possible.  Meet the 2005 Clos Rougeard Saumur-Champigny. While my interest in the Loire has intensified during recent years, I had failed to wrangle even one bottle of the Foucault brothers’ wines.  On the edge of my seat this Thursday evening in the East Village, after a few twists of  the screw and the pop of one small cork, I entered that rare space of wine enthusiast heaven where... [Read more of this review]

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Loomis Vineyards Achieves Early Statement of Style

I like discovering young wineries working their own infant vineyards as wine makers unveil unique styling and a reliance on their own maturing vines that are not yet naturally producing lower yields with more intense and concentrated fruit.  While it can take years to release the untold treasures embodied in newly planted land, it is absolutely possible to capture and present a house style early on.   When those style characteristics include restraint,  flavor purity, solid acidity, consistency, and honest varietal interpretation, I stand at attention as I did tasting through the recent releases from Loomis Family Vineyards. During a recent dinner at a favorite BYOB spot, I had our group taste through the  portfolio of one remarkable rosé, a Grenache Blanc, and a red Rhone varietal blend.  The names of these wines are Air, Snow, and Ember respectively and the blended varietals include Grenache Blanc and Viognier for Snow, and Grenache Noir, Syrah, Mourvedre, and Counoise in Air and Ember.  With this first release of Ember, second... [Read more of this review]

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Social Media Wine Content Earns Its Stripes In Traditional Media Formats

In two small steps for the wine world’s social media content creators, traditional broadcast and print media recently moved in giant steps towards integrating social media wine content inside traditional media formats.  Camouflaged and stealth like, Gary Vaynerchuk, Alder Yarrow, and Tyler Colman set in motion a series of watershed events that just might debunk the fundamental “party platforms” supporting both sides of the tiring but raging debate between traditional and social media wine writers on whose wine content has more value. Earlier this week,  I opened US Airways’ in-flight magazine and noted current contributors included some high profile wine bloggers including Tyler Colman and Alder Yarrow as well as a bevy of bloggers entrenched in other content specialty areas of the blogosphere including William Keens on running business meetings and Carlos Portocarrero on personal finance.  Their contributions, in my opinion, added up to the most compelling content in the magazine. It is a strategy that Dan... [Read more of this review]

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Wine-Searcher.com Turns Joys of Wine Shopping into Risky Anonymity

If wine-searcher.com has its way, their claim and grip on wine market transparency will replace the joyful pleasures of physical wine browsing and shopping.  Wine enthusiasts will be relegated to replaying memories of crouching dusty floors and scavenging Sam’s (Chicago wino history) original North Avenue location’s end bins for discoveries and deals.  No longer will it be fashionable, as I was convinced it once was criss-crossing Long Island’s north and south shores, visiting eight wine shops on a rainy Saturday afternoon searching (oops, there’s that word) best prices and harder to find treasures along the way.  Wine-searcher, a survivor of the dot.com rush and the hard work of an enterprising New Zealander inspired by internet valuations and his work establishing digital commerce for venerable Berry Bros. & Rudd London wine merchant, makes things far simpler as evidenced on the site: Wine-Searcher is a search engine of price lists from 18,032 wine-stores (a total of 3,936,146 offers). The site also offers... [Read more of this review]

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Canlis: A Seattle Food and Wine Oasis

Canlis is so much more than a place to eat and drink well in Seattle.  A combination of the scintillating year-old menu rejuvenation driven by ex-Eleven Madison Park Chef Jason Franey and the Canlis family’s sustained approach to warmth and hospitality leaves diners with nothing less than a spa-like afterglow on each visit.  Last year I shared some thoughts on Canlis’ renewal and a few evenings ago, I witnessed the venerable institution hitting its stride and kicking the whole experience up one more notch. Reserving visits to Canlis solely for special occasions, as so many locals do, is an oversight.  This recent trip gave me a chance to finally share Canlis with my wife on a beautiful Seattle summer evening before our following morning’s journey to the dreamy and isolated town of Torino, BC on Vancouver Island’s west coast.  On a personal note, I pinged Jason Franey in advance to make sure he was in the house to once again offer our deep appreciation to him for helping make our son’s stage at Eleven... [Read more of this review]

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