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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Jerry Garcia in WineZag?

Today would be Jerry Garcia’s 68th birthday.   Had he not passed away in early August of 1995, he most certainly would still be touring with the Grateful Dead, making music deeply embraced by an appreciative and understanding few, misinterpreted and dismissed by so many more.  Jerry gets a nod in WineZag today for [...]

Connecting Intellectual and Palate Learning: Tasting Two Sakes and California Cabernet

An insatiable hunger for discovery and wine education is rewarded every time I taste wines in peer groups.  Without the chance to examine lots of wines every day over an extended period, even frequent tastings of one wine per sitting lays down hurdles to thorough assessment most easily cleared via contextual, side-by-side tastings.   The most [...]

Boston Troquet’s Cellar Dregs Are Wine Lover’s Treasures

Long ago, Troquet cemented its reputation with New England wine enthusiasts as the quintessential fine dining spot in Boston to order and drink memorable wine.   Actually, it all started with Chris Campbell’s earlier Commonwealth Avenue project UVA , a laid back spot offering unassuming atmosphere, serious food, easy prices, and a wine program that brought [...]

Week of WineZag: The Round World of Social Media and Wine Blogging

Wine blogging at WineZag and staying connected in its parallel social networks involves a time and energy commitment yielding grimaces of sympathetic pain and confusion from just about anyone I unveil the details of my dedication to. Except, of course, fellow bloggers and social media mavericks that live in the very round world of social [...]

Wine Industry, Consumers, and Social Media: A Brand Loyalty Conundrum

I am annoyed and conflicted sorting through the efficacy of social media deployment for wineries intending to build brand loyalty.   My visceral understanding of the raw marketing power unleashed by well deployed social media programs and a personal conviction that wine consumers ought to embrace brand/winery/vineyard/house styles and reject brand loyalty fuels my sloppy moral [...]

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