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 […]
Wine for Us…WineZag for Me
I learned some lessons about wine and blogging in 2014. Part of the education involved joyous consumption of interesting and delicious wines with good people. Just as much learning came from never sharing anything about those wine experiences here at WineZag. I have not written since last winter following five years of steady WineZag content. I did try…jotting down a thought or […]
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 […]
Ribelle in Brookline Gives Boston a Sense of Place
Ribelle in Brookline has figured out what other Boston restaurants have not; deliver the quintessential dining experience embodying a Bostonian “sense of place”. Phraseology often finding its way into wine conversations, “sense of place” gives tasters insights and connections to region, weather, vineyard, culture, and overall terroir that begat their beverage. For restaurants, farm-to-table and […]
Gaillard Collines Rhodaniennes Syrah Fresh From the Northern Rhone
Having style expectations for wines from specific regions, like the Northern Rhone as an example, is an unavoidable reflex after years of tasting. Planning to drink a Northern Rhone Syrah from AOP’s like Cote Rotie, Hermitage, Cornas, or St. Joseph requires some fortitude. For one, they are not cheap. Second, modern day Northern Rhone Syrahs […]
Choosing a Restaurant Wine List Over Food
As the eight of us maneuvered on a street corner to hail two NYC yellow cabs, my son asked me why we were traveling from 66th and Central Park West to Williamsburg, Brooklyn for dinner. “Aren’t there any nice restaurants in Manhattan?” It was a fair question. I explained I had booked a table for […]
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“. […]
Crisis in Wine Enthusiasm Averted
It has been quite some time, four weeks to be exact, since I have written here about wine. That is the longest hiatus since WineZag launched in 2009. Extended and distant third world travel, ailing elderly family, and our children’s and their friends’ return home from university have shaped the silence. More to the point, the confluence […]
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 […]
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