Some Old Wine Bottles

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 older [...]

Sur Lie and Bottle Aged Muscadet in May

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 acidity, [...]

Case For Tasting Bordeaux, Barolo, and California Syrah

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.  I [...]

White Wines Of Alto Adige

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 serious [...]

Does Stony Hill Produce Age Worthy California Chardonnay?

My last bottles of 1990, 1991, 1993, and 1997 Stony Hill Chardonnay comprised a short vertical flight preceding two blind flights of 2007 Cabernets that sixteen members of our Boston tasting group recently slurped, swallowed, and spit their way through.  I purchased the wines on release back in the 90′s and one bottle from each [...]

Three Champagne Tasting Lessons

The blind Champagne tasting was organized for our group’s usual critical dissection.  The sparklers made the tasting calendar because a regular member of our vinous clan, Dale Cruse, has been wrapped in a self declared “Champagne Campaign” mission, adhering to his disciplined plan of tasting at least one glass of sparkling wine every day for a [...]

2008 Bordeaux Vintage Tasting

The Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux just rolled across America on a four city press and trade tour with more than one hundred different Chateau owners, representatives, and wines representing and promoting the 2008 vintage from thirteen different appellations.  Normally, for fun, context, and some learning I’ll pour two different vintages of the same [...]

Drink Ribera With a Vega Sicilia Kicker

January is a time for dormant vines, hushed wineries, and touring wine makers.  It signals a season of invitations to trade and press dinners, events, and tastings that can stress even the loosest calendar.  I managed to squeeze in a Vega Sicilia tasting hosted by Spain’s Ribera del Duero viticultural region, or DO.  Spain’s de [...]

Wine Style Experiment Offers Palate Redemption

Raging self doubt and curiosity fuels an unremitting panoply of cross examinations intended to dig up the root cause of my shifting preference in wine style.  Have I fallen victim to trend and popular fashion?  Is my palate simply evolving?  Or, have I discovered regions and varietals I once dismissed without fair chance? Did I subconsciously succumb to a new breed [...]

Beaujolais Tasting Recipe: Sweet & Sour Onion Sage Bruschetta

Wine needs appropriate food to dance with with even in critically serious tasting situations.  It’s one of a few life rules to steadily honor.  As such, I reflexively succumb to a ceremonial tasting day duty, before each of our group’s monthly blind tasting soirees, of preparing a few things that are different and hopefully more [...]

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