This is a new world wine story involving Kalin Cellars. But first, a story about a new world. Dedicated wine writing felt intellectually trivial and morally inappropriate for an extended period of time. Investing 60 hours a month writing about something as indulgently luxurious as fine wine felt wrong in the context of the world around me. Today marks the conclusion […]
Dirty & Rowdy’s Hardy Wallace On Petite Sirah and Improvisation
While still exceptions to the rules, some California winemakers are challenging common assumptions about how Golden State wines ought to taste. Some of the movement’s chroniclers think about these wines and winemakers as “New Wave”. Prominent critics will ascribe California wines’ emerging stylistic diversity as part and parcel of a “widening and maturing of consumer tastes“. […]
Why We Taste Grower Champagne
Grower Champagnes have displaced big house wines in our Boston blind tasting group’s annual Champagne tasting lineups for the last few years. As the keeper of these lineups, I am reporting this with nagging self awareness that I may have allowed us New Englanders to become victimized by trend. If the tradition of Champagne and […]
Sicilian Wine Tasting
Sicilian wine provided all the southern Italian warmth and attitude you could hope for at the kick off event of our 2013/14 Boston blind tasting series. Frappato arancini, panelle, escarole and bean soup, hand made orecchiette, and Sicilian green olive tapenade with fresh ricotta had little chance of upstaging these overly expressive wines. While the […]
Robert Parker on Napa Wine Prices
In case you missed issue #209 of the Wine Advocate, Robert Parker pinch hit (a change in role from his vertical revisits) and reviewed recent release Napa Valley wines during the post-Anthony Galloni transition phase. According to Parker, it is Part I of the single largest Wine Advocate Napa report ever produced in the history […]
Cooperage and Second Generation Lessons at Liparita and Hoopes
A long time ago, Jason Fisher played defense for Boston College’s legendary Division 1 hockey program. That was before he made his left turn to UC Davis Viticulture and Oenology school. Lindsay Hoopes grew up in a white country house in Oakville next to the eight acre Hoopes Vineyard that her father planted in 1989. […]
Stalked and Mauled in Sonoma Tasting Rooms
Since California’s winery tasting rooms are regular touch points for consumers and producers, these spaces also serve as arenas for the collision of buyer and seller agendas. I am not witness to tasting room protocols much since my meetings with farmers and winemakers usually happen in vineyards, cellars, homes, and restaurants. I got a fresh […]
Beaufort Champagne Fit For A Crowd
It’s 3:30PM on a September Monday and 150 garden bloggers sit classroom style inside a large hotel ballroom listening to a panel of content marketing experts sharing strategies for using Houzz, Pinterest, and Google to build their personal brands. As the panel concludes, you step in front of the microphone for a brief word and […]
Txomin Etxaniz Txakoli Wine Moment
Normally, I think of Txakoli, Txakolina, or phonetically represented chockoleena in easy-drinking aperitif terms; refreshing, simple, high acidity, dazzling spritz, low alcohol. However you say or spell it, the wine pairs particularly well with seafood and a wider range of pintxos, casually served in tumblers inside Spain’s Basque region taverns. If you will, these wines remind me of little […]
China Wine Investment Tragedy
Estimating the complete global wine market impact from an increasing pace of China wine investment activity has grown unsettling. For context, think of it in these drastic terms. A couple of years ago I was driving around Zimbabwe and noticed Asian workers entering an energy facility. My driver explained that Chinese investors were acquiring mining resources and […]
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