Top Three Wines – Roagna, Huet, and A Donkey & Goat

Tweet The fact these three wines rose to the top of an epically long list of compelling wines place them in a class of their own.  One is from Sierra Foothills vineyards and a small young Berkeley, California winery while the other two are firmly ensconced in their old Barbaresco and Vouvray regions.  A bonus to last month’s [...]

Loire Chenin Blanc Tasting Makes Case To “Just Drink”

Tweet We kicked off our Boston blind tasting group’s 2011 season comparing a dozen chenin blancs mostly from the Loire Valley.  A fascination with blind tasting connects all the way back with my earliest attempts to learn about wine twenty five years ago. There is no easier way for for me to identify the unique [...]

Balaban’s Wine Shop and Restaurant: St. Louis’ Destination for Wine Lovers

Tweet I traveled to St. Louis steadily over the past five years and only discovered Balaban’s wine shop and restaurant on the evening celebrating the sale of our St. Louis business and the conclusion of my regular travel to the city.  Had I known about the wine lover’s destination sooner, it would have been a [...]

Revisiting Cambridge’s T.W. Food

Tweet Walden Street floats in unremarkable limbo somewhere between Harvard’s and Fresh Pond’s respective square and roundabout.  I managed to discover the street in the autumn of 2007 checking out Tim Wiechmann’s newly opened T.W. Food, and immediately returned for a second confirming fix of Wiechmann’s brilliant and individually styled french country cuisine.  Because it [...]

Wine Bottega and Clos Rougeard: Case for Social Media Wine Marketing

Tweet The ever present fragility of my inflated confidence born from half a life of wine enthusiasm can be awfully humbling.  Every year I discover a winery, region, or pool of knowledge that showers self doubt on the veracity of my commitment for exploring and learning about wine; “How could I claim to know anything, [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]