Grower Champagne Makes Sense

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.  I [...]

Top Three Wines of February: Champagne and Valdeorras

February delivered a landslide of Champagne discovery and liquid treasures from a heretofore unknown producer in Northern Spain. The month’s top three wines represented such immense drinking pleasure that they will linger forever in my palate’s memory.  Not mentioned here, and to be completely fair, is the 2005 Clos Rougeard Saumur-Champigny.  This cult-like Loire Cabernet [...]

Champagne Musings: A Wine of Place or Pleasure?

Recent chatter around grower produced and single vineyard Champagne is teasing intellectually vinous curiosities. I “think” most winemakers and growers in any wine region usher fruit from vine to barrel to bottle with the idea of producing pleasure inducing liquid.  On a global basis, wine makers rely on vineyard or broader appellation specificity for reasons that [...]

Saumur, Champagne, and a Little Giant

I have been eating and shopping for wine in New York City this past week and will share a connected vignette of a Saumur-Champigny shopping find, a transported Champagne note, and a wine friendly restaurant.  This week’s quick holiday in New York, where my wine and personal roots run deepest, produced unfavorably opposite impressions on my wallet [...]

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 [...]

Top Three Wines of October: Beaujolais, Barbaresco, and Champagne

In this second “wines of the month” summary report, here are October’s top WineZag recommendations. This autumn unveiled itself with vinous treats from Beaujolais, Champagne, and Barbaresco. 2006 Sottimano Barbaresco Pajore $50: This was my favorite wine in a blind flight of Barolos and Barbarescos spanning two vintages.  I was taken by this wine’s smoky [...]

Smart Pick For Global Champagne (Or Any Other) Day

Bringing the right Champagne to a party is always dicey and curious business for me. Picking bubbles for a gathering of wine and food writers creates new layers of complexity and anxiety.  When the occasion falls on the evening (tonight) of a global Champagne celebration that will connect tasters all around the world at their [...]

A Taste of Loire, Burgundy, and Bordeaux: Replaying Four Remarkable Wines

Louis needed to miss our 2000 Bordeaux tasting.  Instead, he was happily conflicted by a commitment to host dinner at his home for a group of thirty like-minded, active community members dedicated to the preservation and improvement of a local school system’s already profound results.   Louis was intending to pair each of the evening’s [...]

Doing 50 in Bristol: Billecart-Salmon to D'Oliveiras

Thank you to my amazing wife Liz for suggesting, and as much to our very special trans Atlantic chums for hosting our belated 50th birthday celebration in Bristol, England this past weekend.  These friends organized a 40th birthday soiree in our honor back in 1999 and it did not take long for all of us to concur that [...]