Wine Crush, Knowledge, and Beauty

Two favorite wine writers recently teased at the distinction between sensual wine discovery and accumulated wine knowledge. Their words fanned a flame first kindled by my earliest wine crush back in the mid eighties. Not the press and juice kind of crush. I mean the ten-year-old-kiddie-kind-of-crush; when just the thought of that special “someone” lightens [...]

Loire Chenin Blanc Tasting Makes Case To “Just Drink”

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 characteristics [...]

Grace Connects Wine & Winemaker

I do not know Angela Osborne personally but we have had a few email exchanges and I have tried her A Tribute to Grace Grenache from the Santa Barbara Highlands Vineyard. The wine literally shook my senses and turns out to be unlike any other US made Grenache I have ever tasted.  The 2008 vintage example is [...]

Some Old Wine Bottles

95% of wines are consumed within a week of purchase.  It’s a fact, but is it vinous genocide? I had a conversation with a notable wine educator the other night who said he preferred young wines and can only recall tasting eight older wines that were worth the wait or more enjoyable to drink older [...]

High Quality $30 Oregon Pinot & Raymond Usseglio Deal

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 evenings [...]

Connecting South African Wine, Culture, and Topography

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 general [...]

Tempranillo Shows Range and Value in Rioja

Last month the Vibrant Rioja US tour rolled east from San Francisco to New York. Its campaign organizers staged grand tastings in both cities coupled with two smaller, invitation-only tasting seminars designed to showcase the widest possible range of Tempranillo treatment and expression.  It was fun showing up in my Big Apple home town, birthplace [...]

Case For Tasting Bordeaux, Barolo, and California Syrah

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.  I [...]

Blind Wine Tasting Price Research Flawed

A recent piece of wine tasting research by Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire in England, has produced irrelevant conclusions that can be attributed to flawed experiment design. Unfortunately with wine consumption’s increasing popularity, both The Guardian and CNET covered the blind tasting test held at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, designed by [...]

White Wines Of Alto Adige

Alto Adige: Part II – The Wines While the inspiring Alto Adige alpine basin landscape is undeniably alluring, confronting a flight of mid-term, bottle-aged white wines from the region’s leading cooperatives is utterly compelling. Single varietal bottlings of Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Gewurztraminer along with blended versions involving even more varietals were unanimously distinctive and serious [...]

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