Value Discovery: 2006 Hecht & Bannier Minervois at Flyte

It’s a rarity, but I found myself in Nashville, TN last week.  With business entertainment very much on the agenda, I searched for one solid restaurant with a decent wine list and found myself at Flyte World Dining and Wine drinking ($18 ***1/2) 2006 Hecht & Bannier Minervois.  This Languedoc-Roussillon stole my attention, and that’s saying a lot [...]

A Tribute To Grace Tops Wine Blogger Conference Wines

On a weekend in Charlottesville, VA with scores of  domestic and international wine pouring sponsors, ballroom wine fests, fleets of buses covering area wineries, half a dozen restaurant wine lists, and countless treasured bottles transported by wine bloggers from their personal cellars, I had the prettiest and most compelling wine poured for me by Hardy [...]

Eric Asimov Sorts Out Wine Enthusiasm and Journalism

An ever present cloud of self doubt began lifting only ten minutes into Eric Asimov’s 2011 Wine Bloggers Conference keynote talk on responsible journalism, democratization of wine, and differences in generational paths to wine knowledge and appreciation.  I breathed easier as he weaved in and out of these centerpiece issues, connecting and comparing his personal development [...]

Peeking In On Winemakers in Swartland, South Africa

South Africa’s emergent Swartland wine scene nested somewhere near the center of my cultural and intellectual wine curiosity ever since tasting a bottle of Sadie Family Vineyards’ Palladius more than a year ago. Understanding why Swartland consolidates a disproportionate share of the most interesting and compelling wines South Africa has to offer became a personal mission [...]

South Africa Wine Immersion, My Way

I will be swirling, tasting, and spitting in South Africa over the next couple of weeks.  While I enjoy some elements of organized wine travel with groups of fellow wine geeks and writers, this trip is with family and friends on my own time and dime.  Having spent 30 years in media, organized wine immersion [...]

WineBid.com: Reliable Platform for Buying and Selling Wine

If my first WineBid auction experiment stirred your curiosity, then you will be interested to know the sale closed out successfully with 18 of my 19 consigned bottles selling at, or slightly above, reserve pricing.  Only one bottle remains unsold. As suspected, a large slice of bidders and buyers came from Hong Kong and around Asia. As you will [...]

WineBid Auction Kickoff: Guilt Turns Impatient

The wines I put up for sale with WineBid have been away from home for 13 days, so it’s fair time for an update.  I am finally at peace with the decision now that I’ve beaten back the guilt and fully digested the possibility of never seeing those bottles again. That’s the point, I guess; [...]

The Guilt in Selling Fine Wine

I am in the process of selling wine for the first time; not a lot, just some.  But as a novice seller I am unsure whether I am going about this in the right way, or even if I should be selling any wine at all. Besides that tidy basket of anxiety, it’s terribly emotional [...]

Top Three Wines of May: Loire Valley and Niagara, Ontario

May’s “Top Three Wines” headline does not contain a typo.  The reference to Ontario, Canada is purposeful. As a matter of fact, southern Ontario’s wine region (41°-44°) finds itself in a close latitudinal relationship with the Loire Valley (46°-47°), home turf for May’s other top wines.  A couple of this month’s finishers are certain discoveries, [...]

Sell Wine, Ban Water in New York Supermarkets

A bill is about to hit the floors of both the New York State Assembly and Senate that would permit supermarkets to start selling wine statewide.  If the bill happens to pass, it would close out a thirty year argument in New York, one that has been neatly opposed by the state’s local independent wine shop lobby. [...]

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