I’ll admit to spending more time than it’s probably worth thinking about nuances in wine and food culture. For example, I ponder how obvious it is that most of us Americans act with righteous self confidence buying, ordering, and cooking the foodstuffs and ingredients we prefer. We’ll ask questions freely when shopping or ordering to […]
Top Three Wines of July: Swartland, Minervois, Santa Barbara
This month’s top wine wrap up spans three continents including Africa, Europe, and North America. These are all remarkably compelling wines pushing farming and élevage to the edge of their regions’ traditional boundaries. While they are all urgently recommended, securing a bottle or two of Testalonga El Bandito or A Tribute to Grace will require intense investigation and […]
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 […]
High Quality $30 Oregon Pinot & Raymond Usseglio Deal
I guess I’m thankful Tower Wine & Spirits is located in my new “transitional” Atlanta neighborhood near where Piedmont meets Cheshire Bridge. While I live in Boston, I have been spending a lot of time working in Atlanta and it made sense to skip the hotel scene and just get an apartment. With lots of open evenings […]
Swartland Perspective By David Sadie
While he shares what is arguably the most popular surname inside the Swartland, South Africa winemaking cadre, David Sadie is busying himself in Tulbagh without any family relation to the other Swartland Sadie, building a reputation all his own. I met up with David in a quest to understand why Swartland is surfacing as the dominant […]
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 […]
Connecting South African Wine, Culture, and Topography
Slowly pushing south and west towards the Cape’s Swartland region, South Africa’s wine footprint is again coming into focus trekking from Limpopo Province’s bush down to the Port Elizabeth-to-Plettenberg coastline and mountains. Along that path, a couple of broad and large tastings combined with a host of resort wine list experiences to reinforce two general […]
2009 Bielsa Vinas Viejas Garnacha Is Not Pizza Wine
A member of our Boston blind tasting group, Rich Schnitzlen, recently re-merchandised 70% of the inventory that fills my town’s wine shop. The fact that we have only one store of any kind in the entire town, and its proprietors added the wine shop last year following a town vote allowing the sale of alcohol makes it […]
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