Domaine Serene and Chardonnay Tales

Chardonnay remains a tale of two worlds.  One way to consider that proposition is by pondering the polarized old and new world style profiles.  But even setting continental divides aside, the two tales of Chardonnay remain conflicted inside the US.  I was reminded of this when the folks at Harvest PR & Marketing got in [...]

Blind Tasting 2009 Bordeaux Value

The wines hidden inside brown paper bags came from Fronsac, Castillon, and the Haut Medoc. There were two token wines, one from St. Julien and the other St. Emilion.  The most expensive bottle of 2009 Bordeaux in the lineup was $33 retail, insuring that the evening’s foundation would be poured and hardened sans pedigree. Besides [...]

Languedoc Scope Maps Value and Challenge

Like so many older European winemaking regions, the Languedoc has instigated its own transformation during the last decade as more informed and new generations of winemakers introduced state of the art winemaking technique to showcase local terroir.  The development can not be taken casually since the Languedoc, combined with its southwest neighboring sister region Roussillon, represents more [...]

2009 Pinot Noir Blind Tasting

Blind tasting seventeen different examples of 2009 pinot noir in one sitting was repeated evidence, inside twenty five years of steady reminders, that side-by-side peer group blind tasting is the most legitimate format to learn about wine and your personal palate.  In Robert Dwyer’s opening paragraphs of his detailed Wellesley Wine Press tasting note post on [...]

Top Three Wines: Saint-Emilion and Rhone Valley

One quick scan of my January tasting notes and I immediately knew which three wines produced greater reward than any other.  All are French, two from the southern Rhone Valley and one from Saint-Émilion.  Besides common French ancestry, all three rank as intense values in their own class. The 1994 Vieux Telegraph recompensed fifteen years [...]

Grower Champagne Makes Sense

The last few years taught me that Champagne is wine, not just bottled fireworks poised to explode on special occasions.  Champagne’s food and aperitif friendliness are more interesting to me now than at any other time during my twenty seven year wine zag. I used to zag around Champagne while others zigged straight at it.  I [...]

Pleiades XX, Thackrey, & Local Three: Authentic Collision

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 wine [...]

Wine Rock Star-Part 2

You don’t have to be a Rock Star to drink wine like one.  Rock Star Winos beguile fame, demagnetize paparazzi, leave crowd-free wakes, and sign no autographs.  Being a Rock Star Wino with the juice to indulge audiences in sensory, intellectual, and emotional celebration is unassuming and simple.   So, if you read Wine Rock Star- [...]

Wine Rock Star-Part 1

I just finished reading Dave McIntyre’s recent piece in the Washington Post about ways to enjoy wine more in 2012.  He delivers a handful of useful, but ordinary suggestions for etching a couple more garden variety notches into your wine bedpost. Honestly, I was hoping for more.  Alas, a missed opportunity to share some geeky [...]

Erpacrife Nebbiolo-Best Sparkling Wine Ever?

Rarely do the polarizing forces du jour swirling around wine’s combustible circles, like new world vs. old world, traditional vs. modern, or natural vs. unnatural(?), create radically new standard bearers overnight. Each corner in the world of wine is too steeped in history, nature, method, and skill to be knocked out in a single round. So how [...]

Next Page »