Blind Tasting 2009 Bordeaux Value

The wines hidden inside brown paper bags came from Fronsac, Castillon, and the Haut Medoc. There were two token wines, one from St. Julien and the other St. Emilion.  The most expensive bottle of 2009 Bordeaux in the lineup was $33 retail, insuring that the evening’s foundation would be poured and hardened sans pedigree. Besides [...]

Languedoc Scope Maps Value and Challenge

Like so many older European winemaking regions, the Languedoc has instigated its own transformation during the last decade as more informed and new generations of winemakers introduced state of the art winemaking technique to showcase local terroir.  The development can not be taken casually since the Languedoc, combined with its southwest neighboring sister region Roussillon, represents more [...]

Cos Frappato 2010 Delivers Sicilian Style

What’s not to like about Sicily’s frappato grape?  Bright cherry and red berry fruit, silky juice, light body, excellent acidity, and great consumer value. Earlier this year I was knocked out by the frappatos and nero d’Avolas from Arianna Occhipinti, realizing how unadorned (maybe a good alternative to the overused “natural” marketing spin?) winemaking can turn [...]

2009 Pinot Noir Blind Tasting

Blind tasting seventeen different examples of 2009 pinot noir in one sitting was repeated evidence, inside twenty five years of steady reminders, that side-by-side peer group blind tasting is the most legitimate format to learn about wine and your personal palate.  In Robert Dwyer’s opening paragraphs of his detailed Wellesley Wine Press tasting note post on [...]

Chicago Wine & Ribs + Pizza & Hot Dog Sides

Like all great cities, eating and drinking in Chicago is a dual proposition.  While the likes of Alinea, Moto, and Green Zebra ping away at culinary pleasure sensors, the city’s midwest soul food circuits beckon.  I developed my own ritual patterns for Chicago’s simpler local eating more than twenty years ago, always making sure to [...]

Top Three Wines: Saint-Emilion and Rhone Valley

One quick scan of my January tasting notes and I immediately knew which three wines produced greater reward than any other.  All are French, two from the southern Rhone Valley and one from Saint-Émilion.  Besides common French ancestry, all three rank as intense values in their own class. The 1994 Vieux Telegraph recompensed fifteen years [...]

AN/2 & Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894 at Barcelona

The world is better off for places like Barcelona.  Wines such as Anima Negra AN/2 from Majorca’s red callet grape and Bodegas Palacios Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894 from Rioja’s white viura variety don’t make it onto just any wine list.  But at Barcelona Restaurant and Wine Bar, ten minutes off of I-84 in (of all places?) West Hartford’s [...]

Pleiades XX, Thackrey, & Local Three: Authentic Collision

Some wine is described to be authentic. I have been meaning to build a working definition of authenticity for my own clarification and finally managed to squash a prolonged streak of procrastination after discovering ($25 ****) Sean Thackrey’s Pleiades XX on Atlanta’s Local Three Kitchen & Bar wine list. This adjective that has blossomed into standard wine enthusiast fodder, bandied throughout critical wine [...]

3 Reasons Puech-Haut Prestige 2009 Is Top Holiday Wine

Imagine the convenience of someone delivering two cases of one very perfect red wine to your front door every year at the start of the holiday season.  Not 100 point and $6,000 a case perfect, just perfectly versatile, delicious, and affordable red wine for all the usual and familiar holiday situations. Something to serve at oversubscribed [...]

Calvet-Thunevin Hugo On Turtle Creek Mansion List

Once again I found myself staring at a classic wine list, this time at the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, that was deep in severely marked up classic Bordeaux, Burgundy, and California Cabernet.  Looking for an after dinner bottle to enjoy with some colleagues did  not call for $300 California Cabernet, $600 Burgundy, nor [...]

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