Grower Champagne Makes Sense

Tweet The last few years taught me that Champagne is wine, not just bottled fireworks poised to explode on special occasions.  Champagne’s food and aperitif friendliness are more interesting to me now than at any other time during my twenty seven year wine zag. I used to zag around Champagne while others zigged straight at it. [...]

Wine Rock Star-Part 2

Tweet You don’t have to be a Rock Star to drink wine like one.  Rock Star Winos beguile fame, demagnetize paparazzi, leave crowd-free wakes, and sign no autographs.  Being a Rock Star Wino with the juice to indulge audiences in sensory, intellectual, and emotional celebration is unassuming and simple.   So, if you read Wine Rock [...]

2011 Wine Highlights Part 2- Wine Community

Tweet When I launched WineZag in 2009, I did it under a founding motto of “wine is a lubricant for human connection that holds no bias.”  The essence of my wine appreciation has always transcended the juice, gravitating to the center of human bonding and relationships that are accelerated by shared wine experiences; either during [...]

2011 Wine Highlights Part 1: Wine & Restaurants

Tweet While the best wine and food might still appear on my table over the next couple of weeks, 2011 is quickly shutting down like newly bottled Bordeaux and I catch myself reminiscing over the year that was in wine and food. These musings must not be mistaken for a quintessential nor ultimate reminiscence of [...]

5 Reasons Winery Mailing Lists Fail Consumers

Tweet Winery mailing lists live at the crossroads of privileged access and blind consumerism.  High demand, limited release, and cult wines combined with unnavigable distribution challenges to spawn a “mailing list” culture that left some wineries with powerful sets of marketing and distribution crutches. At its most functional, direct to consumer marketing makes it easier [...]

Loire Chenin Blanc Tasting Makes Case To “Just Drink”

Tweet We kicked off our Boston blind tasting group’s 2011 season comparing a dozen chenin blancs mostly from the Loire Valley.  A fascination with blind tasting connects all the way back with my earliest attempts to learn about wine twenty five years ago. There is no easier way for for me to identify the unique [...]

Some Old Wine Bottles

Tweet 95% of wines are consumed within a week of purchase.  It’s a fact, but is it vinous genocide? I had a conversation with a notable wine educator the other night who said he preferred young wines and can only recall tasting eight older wines that were worth the wait or more enjoyable to drink [...]

Sur Lie and Bottle Aged Muscadet in May

Tweet Years ago on a bright seventy degree afternoon, moments after tying off our boat in the Camargue’s picturesque Marseillan port, I fell in love with Muscadet and its Melon de Bourgogne grape lounging in a simple oyster restaurant’s tiny outdoor courtyard.  It was a magical few hours.  I was taken by the wine’s satiating freshness, crisp [...]

Case For Tasting Bordeaux, Barolo, and California Syrah

Tweet Tasting wine in peer groups always feels clinically informative, digging around for distinguishing nuances against identical backgrounds of grape variety, vintage, or appellation. It trains my palate and sharpens a vocabulary of descriptors. Tasting a potpourri of unrelated wines from completely different vintages, continents, countries, and varieties can be as discerning in different ways. [...]

White Wines Of Alto Adige

Tweet Alto Adige: Part II – The Wines While the inspiring Alto Adige alpine basin landscape is undeniably alluring, confronting a flight of mid-term, bottle-aged white wines from the region’s leading cooperatives is utterly compelling. Single varietal bottlings of Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Gewurztraminer along with blended versions involving even more varietals were unanimously distinctive and [...]

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