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 [...]

2008 Bordeaux Vintage Tasting

Tweet 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 [...]

Top Three Wines of December

Tweet France scores a smooth hat trick in the WineZag “Top Three Wines” December round up. This holiday month provided ample opportunity to drink a lot of great, and not so great, wine with boastful price tags and venerable credentials.  These WineZag “top three” wines are especially worthy, all offering pinnacle palate moments that stand [...]

2009 Beaujolais Tasting Highlights and Controversy

Tweet Seventeen tasters eagerly participated in our highly anticipated 2009 blind Beaujolais tasting. While the air in my home was continually pierced by clinking glassware, the halls of Boston University’s Elizabeth Bishop Wine Resource Center were most definitely hushed while several of its students, graduates, and instructors were firmly planted around our tasting table dissecting glass [...]

Three Sparkling Wines Upstaged By Patricia Boyer-Domergue’s Profound Minervois

Tweet We rightfully anchored our post graduation ceremony celebration with a potpourri of sparklers including two that previously received favorable reviews here, NV Chidaine Montlouis Methode Traditionelle Brut Loire and NV Aubry Brut Premier Cru, Champagne plus a really interesting and exotic sparkling Malvasia Dell’Emilia value that you will read about at WineZag soon. But on this late [...]

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

Tweet 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 [...]

Questioning the Sensibility of Bordeaux’s New Found Irrelevance

Tweet Eric Asimov helped me feel old, out of the loop,  and crusty today simply because I prefer Bordeaux.  Please do not crucify me en masse, and allow me to cling to a hard earned 51-year-old point of view that many of the world’s finest wines are products of Bordeaux as you join me on a [...]

Blind Tasting Series Report Part II: 2000 Bordeaux

Tweet The kaleidoscope of quality wine in market channels at any given time serves as decoy and easy distraction from the simple truth of Bordeaux’s classic performance and superior drinking experience.  My cellared claret sits ignored and unmoved for long stretches of time while I uncork wines with age-worthiness generating far less confidence.  The second flight of [...]

Chenin Heaven from Vouvray’s Bernard Fouquet and Domaine des Aubuisieres’ 2008 Les Girardieres

Tweet Bernard Fouquet is an accomplished and quality Vouvray producer, focused on Chenin Blanc across 25 hectares and and seven vineyards that make up Domaine des Aubuisieres’ fruit sources.  All of unique character and terroir, they split into two primary soil types including clay/limestone or clay/flint.  His portfolio includes soil specific blends and vineyard specific bottlings. [...]

Languedoc Tasting: Expressive Wines and Multiple Styles

Tweet Some things about the Languedoc just don’t seem very French at all.  Frontier lands, Spanish culinary influence, Gypsy lore, uncontrolled wine production, and more.  In a recent visit to the edge of the region’s northwest Mediterannean shoreline, Camargue, we reveled in almost unlimited sightings of wild white horse and pink flamingo from the comfort [...]

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