Pleiades XX, Thackrey, & Local Three: Authentic Collision

Tweet 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 [...]

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 [...]

Top Three Wines: Monbousquet, Raquillet, & Mullineux

Tweet Top wines this month bring together strange bedfellows including a Southern Hemisphere syrah from the long ignored vineyards in South Africa’s Swartland Cape Winelands outpost, a brilliant Burgundy from the stepchild Côte Chalonnaise village of Mercurey, and Bordeaux from a refocused producer working right bank Saint-Émilion vineyards. Each one of these wines represents strong value [...]

Burgundy Value Not Oxymoron in Mercurey

Tweet The region’s wines are monuments to fine drinking at their pinnacle but inconsistent, expensive, and hardIy easy to understand with intricate layers of sub regions, villages, vineyard divisions, and winemakers.  So not buying or drinking Burgundy with any regularity, the fact that Mercurey was a pre-phylloxera, top Burgundy production village before sinking in popularity [...]

High Quality $30 Oregon Pinot & Raymond Usseglio Deal

Tweet I guess I’m thankful Tower Wine & Spirits is located in my new “transitional” Atlanta neighborhood near where Piedmont meets Cheshire Bridge. While I live in Boston, I have been spending a lot of time working in Atlanta and it made sense to skip the hotel scene and just get an apartment.  With lots of open [...]

Top Three Wines of May: Loire Valley and Niagara, Ontario

Tweet May’s “Top Three Wines” headline does not contain a typo.  The reference to Ontario, Canada is purposeful. As a matter of fact, southern Ontario’s wine region (41°-44°) finds itself in a close latitudinal relationship with the Loire Valley (46°-47°), home turf for May’s other top wines.  A couple of this month’s finishers are certain [...]

Special Wine Alert: 2008 Brewer-Clifton Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir

Tweet Tonight, a couple of colleagues and I hosted dinner at Sushi Den in Denver for Chris Mygatt, President of Coldwell Banker Residential in Colorado.  Chris was a great dinner companion, and shared some  of the really progressive activities he has been orchestrating in concert with the 1100 Colorado Coldwell agents.  It is possible to [...]

Wine and Food at Troquet: Half of Uncanny New York Analog

Tweet On August 26, 2009 Frank Bruni inked his last New York Times Dining column answering a group of questions that follow around restaurant critics with pulpits as authoritative as his.   Finding great value is on everyone’s minds these days, and his “top value spot” answer to New York foodies neatly covered two of my [...]

On Boeuf Bourguignon, Docs, Pinot Noir, and Nirvana

Tweet For folks that allocate non trivial sums of their waking hours tasting fine wine and devouring information in appreciative support of things vinous, the ultimate reward occurs when the collage of food, wine, and human connection intersect with seamless harmony in one pinnacle vignette.  My experience with this form of cerebral tickling generally takes [...]

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