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 […]
Couly Dutheil Les Chanteaux Chinon Blanc
Have you ever had a wine that haunts you? More explicitly, did you ever taste a wine where its form and impression continually manifest themselves long after the wine is gone? Maybe it stayed in your presence days and weeks after the bottle was killed; so much so that you suspect its afterlife form will […]
Kaleidoscope of Wine Styles and Jeremy Parzen
A friend of mine that sells wine in Massachusetts has told me more than once he admires my openness and flexibility for enjoying varied styles of wine. Fresh, aged, brooding, bright, acidic, chewy, earthy, fruity, dense, leesy, steel, wood, white, red, rosé, brett, sparkling…no matter. He’s right; with the caveats of passable vintage conditions, good […]
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 […]
Top Three Wines From Valpolicella, Loire, and Alsace
Looking backwards over a month of tasting in order to pick the Top Three Wines is an ambiguous endeavor. Imagine one full month of visiting different amusement parks every week. You climb onto one hundred different rides before picking the top three in hindsight. What’s the criteria? The most unique design? How about the rides that made […]
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. […]
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 […]
Not Your Everyday Wines
It was another week of wine discovery and while these were not everyday wines for most, they are more frequent indulgences for some lucky others. With wine discovery comes new and interesting friends, and this week did not disappoint. Here is a quick round up that spans Friuli, Austin, Etna, Prosecco Land, Saumur, and Sicily. […]
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