Loomis Vineyards Achieves Early Statement of Style

I like discovering young wineries working their own infant vineyards as wine makers unveil unique styling and a reliance on their own maturing vines that are not yet naturally producing lower yields with more intense and concentrated fruit.  While it can take years to release the untold treasures embodied in newly planted land, it is [...]

Connecting Intellectual and Palate Learning: Tasting Two Sakes and California Cabernet

An insatiable hunger for discovery and wine education is rewarded every time I taste wines in peer groups.  Without the chance to examine lots of wines every day over an extended period, even frequent tastings of one wine per sitting lays down hurdles to thorough assessment most easily cleared via contextual, side-by-side tastings.   The most [...]

Week of WineZag: The Round World of Social Media and Wine Blogging

Wine blogging at WineZag and staying connected in its parallel social networks involves a time and energy commitment yielding grimaces of sympathetic pain and confusion from just about anyone I unveil the details of my dedication to. Except, of course, fellow bloggers and social media mavericks that live in the very round world of social [...]

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

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

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 [...]

Blind Tasting Series Report Part II: 2000 Bordeaux

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 2000 [...]

Blind Tasting Series Report Part 1: Viognier

After a several year hiatus, a successful season of reincarnation has passed for the blind tasting series and wine enthusiast group that I am pleased to regale monthly at my home.  Each tasting requires hours of preparation including wine acquisition, printed line ups, tasting agendas, room set, food and bread supply, wine prep, glassware provisioning, [...]

Zalto: Wine Glasses for the Cosmic Connoisseur

Somewhere in between making wine and storing wine, service plays THE crucial supporting role in a wine’s performance. Mistakes in temperature, aeration, and glassware can foul things up as easily as contaminated or cooked cork can. Conversely,  it is not secret that great glassware can pump up a tasting experience like sluggers on steroids.  That [...]

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

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.  On [...]

Languedoc Tasting: Expressive Wines and Multiple Styles

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 of [...]

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