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 [...]

3 Reasons Puech-Haut Prestige 2009 Is Top Holiday Wine

Tweet 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 [...]

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 [...]

Connecting South African Wine, Culture, and Topography

Tweet Slowly pushing south and west towards the Cape’s Swartland region, South Africa’s wine footprint is again coming into focus trekking from Limpopo Province’s bush down to the Port Elizabeth-to-Plettenberg coastline and mountains.  Along that path, a couple of broad and large tastings combined with a host of resort wine list experiences to reinforce two [...]

Case For Tasting Bordeaux, Barolo, and California Syrah

Tweet 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. [...]

Rostaing Class, Quality, and Value From Nimes

Tweet As a year of proximity to my wine cellar ended on Christmas morning sitting on the tarmac waiting to escape to Puerto Rico’s northern shoreline, I could not stop thinking about the wine that rocked my palate the night before with the very Italian meal produced by my very Sicilian wife.  I recommend wines [...]

Canlis: A Seattle Food and Wine Oasis

Tweet Canlis is so much more than a place to eat and drink well in Seattle.  A combination of the scintillating year-old menu rejuvenation driven by ex-Eleven Madison Park Chef Jason Franey and the Canlis family’s sustained approach to warmth and hospitality leaves diners with nothing less than a spa-like afterglow on each visit.  Last [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

2004 Dumol Syrah: A Country Club Wine?

Tweet American country clubs and their wine lists are simpatico; boring, nondescript bottles of wine punctuated by a few “has been”, overpriced, tired Cabernet and Chardonnay brands served up to a homogeneous pool of status-subscribing members willing to pay for social standing.   Apologies for these harshly extreme generalizations, but my memory banks were recently refreshed at [...]

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