ShareJust returned from a Valentine’s Day tasting at Viansa in Sonoma, and I’m happy to report that we learned something.
We paired three wines with chocolate desserts, including chocolate-covered strawberries, kiwi, and banana, plus biscotti and a couple of wine-flavored chocolate sauces. While we were especially fond of Viansa’s “Prindelo” 2006 (a blend of red Italian [...]
ShareI just read Neal Rosenthal’s Reflections of a Wine Merchant, in which the importer — who is well-known by his fans to be a master of the geographical intricacies of French Burgundy — confesses that he learned from Barolo to appreciate the influence of the land on wine. So it was Barolo, not Burgundy, that [...]
ShareA recent trip to France convinced me that, ironically, the best place to drink French wine nowadays is in California. Let me give you an example: a red wine from Cairanne in the Southern Rhône, a 2007 Côte du Rhône Villages from Domaine Catherine le Goeuil, which I bought at Kermit Lynch Wines in [...]
ShareLast night the Ladies Tasting Society met to blind-taste five red varietals, that is, wines made primarily from, and named after, one grape variety (for example pinot noir or cabernet sauvignon). It was an exciting and highly competitive tasting, since not only did the ladies score ourselves based on how many aspects of the wine [...]
ShareDespite the attacks waged by Wine Dictator magazine on poor Dry Creek Valley, after visiting 10 standout Dry Creek producers a couple weeks ago during their Passport party weekend, I remain thoroughly charmed. Although the chief California editor believes Dry Creek lacks a signature varietal, I think it’s clearly zinfandel–in fact, two zins and a [...]
ShareDry Creek Valley just can’t get no respect. Lately James Laube, the chief California taster for the Wine Dictator Spectator magazine, has been pointing thumbs-down on the entire appellation, a bucolic stretch of vineyards and dairy farms tucked into the northwestern corner of Sonoma county. Dry Creek, he laments, has an identity problem: it lacks [...]
ShareMy wife likes to tease me by saying that I “woefully under-decant.” I don’t think so. But it is true that I rarely decant. And I admit that a few times I’ve been burned by not decanting — take the example of the Glen Carlou 2005 Grand Classique I wrote about recently. In fact, the [...]
Share“Weird.” That’s what I thought when I first tasted Glen Carlou’s 2005 Grand Classique, a Bordeaux-style red blend from South Africa. It displayed such strong notes of game, doused campfire, and rusty iron, it made me think of an old farm. So I had a glass, vacuum-stopped the bottle, then revisted the next day — [...]
ShareI’m still scratching my head over the 2005 Orin Swift “Papillon” we ordered at Elway’s Steak House in Denver — and almost rejected because the bottle is so repulsive! It would have been the first time I’d sent a wine back because the label made my stomach turn.
Good thing we tamped down our revulsion, because [...]
ShareA bottle of 2001 Cornas from August Clape got me wondering recently about a thing called bottle variation. You see, the Cornas was a show stopper. My notes read: “Mouth-watering aromas of green olives and black fruit. A huge syrah, rich, maybe a little monolithic, but with loads of ripe plum and distinct olive and [...]