Burgundy Value Not Oxymoron in Mercurey

The region’s wines are monuments to fine drinking at their pinnacle but inconsistent, expensive, and hardIy easy to understand with intricate layers of sub regions, villages, vineyard divisions, and winemakers.  So not buying or drinking Burgundy with any regularity, the fact that Mercurey was a pre-phylloxera, top Burgundy production village before sinking in popularity and [...]

Ignoring California Wines: Is Anybody Listening?

Last week Steve Heimoff published a post called “California Needs To Be Careful It Doesn’t Price Itself Out Of The Market.”  I become confused when I read things like this because the fact of the matter is California violated my personal quality to price ratio (QPR) tolerance more than a decade ago.  For me, California [...]

Palate Press Uncorks Swartland Revolution

Earlier this summer (winter in South Africa’s Swartland wine growing subregion) I had the chance to mix it up with the drivers of the Swartland Revolution; the winemakers.  Ever since I began to comprehend the unusually high authenticity and quality levels of the upstart region’s wines, I started sharing information about individual pieces of the [...]

Wine Knowledge and Australia

I just received an interesting email from the Wine Australia representative I met at the Wine Bloggers Conference last month. Antonia Muir is memorable because, among other things, she gave me a very cool grey promotional t-shirt with only one line across the chest proclaiming “Everyone Has A Story.” While I am happy to fly [...]

Swartland Perspective By David Sadie

While he shares what is arguably the most popular surname inside the Swartland, South Africa winemaking cadre, David Sadie is busying himself in Tulbagh without any family relation to the other Swartland Sadie, building a reputation all his own.  I met up with David in a quest to understand why Swartland is surfacing as the dominant [...]

Peeking In On Winemakers in Swartland, South Africa

South Africa’s emergent Swartland wine scene nested somewhere near the center of my cultural and intellectual wine curiosity ever since tasting a bottle of Sadie Family Vineyards’ Palladius more than a year ago. Understanding why Swartland consolidates a disproportionate share of the most interesting and compelling wines South Africa has to offer became a personal mission [...]

Connecting South African Wine, Culture, and Topography

Slowly pushing south and west towards the Cape’s Swartland region, South Africa’s wine footprint is again coming into focus trekking from Limpopo Province’s bush down to the Port Elizabeth-to-Plettenberg coastline and mountains.  Along that path, a couple of broad and large tastings combined with a host of resort wine list experiences to reinforce two general [...]

South Africa Wine Immersion, My Way

I will be swirling, tasting, and spitting in South Africa over the next couple of weeks.  While I enjoy some elements of organized wine travel with groups of fellow wine geeks and writers, this trip is with family and friends on my own time and dime.  Having spent 30 years in media, organized wine immersion [...]

Tempranillo Shows Range and Value in Rioja

Last month the Vibrant Rioja US tour rolled east from San Francisco to New York. Its campaign organizers staged grand tastings in both cities coupled with two smaller, invitation-only tasting seminars designed to showcase the widest possible range of Tempranillo treatment and expression.  It was fun showing up in my Big Apple home town, birthplace [...]

Get Over Yourself With Niagara Wine

The idea of heading north for the long immersion weekend on both sides of the Niagara wine region’s international border was not rocking my world. Despite looking forward to the vinous camaraderie of TasteCamp 2011′s wine writer gang, Niagara wines never competed for my attention or cellar space and doubt was raging that one weekend of [...]

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