Wine stemware was conspicuously absent at AKA Bistro’s sake and French cuisine dinner. On the table in front of me, next to a flask-like tokkuuri, were wood box masu, some kiki choko beaming their bottom-of-the-cup targets, and a flat ceremonial sakazuki drinking vessel. Of course, I would know little about any of this crystal-trumping nomenclature without the help of […]
90 Plus Cellars Tasting Produces Nameless Pleasure
In every blind tasting there is secret hope for fresh discovery and the eradication of closely held biases like perpetually ignored regions, varieties, producers, or vintages. While the blind tasting experience is completely unrelated to luxurious enjoyment of wine with a meal, they serve as uniquely productive platforms for continuing wine education. Recently, I shared […]
Pair Wine With Children Not Food
It is easy to turn your back on wine media around Thanksgiving. Hundreds of wine and food writers boldly recommend thousands of wines to pair with millions of holiday ingredient and flavor tapestries. It all looks as delusional as amusement park revelers wagering on spinning arcade lottery wheels; the odds say your instincts for picking […]
90+ Cellars Wines and Paul Bloom Pleasure Theory
Are wines that enthusiasts buy, drink, and derive pleasure from somehow linked to what they know about their origin, craftsmanship, and history? According to Yale Professor Paul Bloom’s TED talk, while it should be just as possible to enjoy a wine of unknown source and origin, it simply isn’t. The following is a really enjoyable and fascinating […]
WineBid Values By Parker and Australia?
Last year, at the height of Bordeaux auction hysteria, WineBid.com made a market for nineteen bottles of my classic wines laying in the cellar untouched for too many years. It connected buyers, seemingly Hong Kong brokers, with wines I originally paid $50-$75 at exaggerated price points representing handsome profits. Two summers ago, I chronicled that WineBid sale […]
Damien Lorieux Tuffeaux Bourgueil: Really $15?
The hunt for great wine is an incessant indulgence. Through one series after another of holy grail-like expeditions, once hidden wines are excavated and brought to new light in never ending streams of prized byproducts via diligent wine reconnaissance. As the years unfurl, the hunt shifts away from low hanging Bordeaux, Rhone Valley, Piedmont, and […]
Blind Tasting 2010 French Wine Values
Six bottles of 2010 southern French red wines told the story. With the low yield, long hang time, high quality vintage examples selling for $17 and under at retail, the story wanted to be good. All of the wines were without flaw, dark purple, full of fruit, round, rich, and without any hard edges to make them […]
Blind Tasting 1998 Chateauneuf du Pape
Early critical accounts pegged the 1998 Chateauneuf du Pape vintage as monumental. Grenache and Syrah flourished under favorable growing conditions. Yet, decade old tasting memories bulged from powerful, tight, and stubborn bottles expressing convincing cellar potential. Could a dozen year term of lingering dark, cool rest unveil beauty beneath youthful armor? With this in mind, […]
Breakfast Wine
Is there hope for wine becoming a tightly woven staple inside the fabric of all meals; consumed sans any hint of pomp and circumstance? While the prospect is mesmerizing, it feels more countercultural than any of my 1970’s teenage years ever did. Can Americans honestly aspire to adopt a European wine-as-food lifestyle? Or, is the thought […]
Alessio Planeta, Sicily, and Frappato
Alessio Planeta is amiable, direct, and very Sicilian. That’s all immediately apparent. As his story unfolds, he bares an even more adventurous lining. He is one of Planeta Wines‘ family shepherds; opening wineries and tending vineyards like explorers criss-crossing Sicily’s southern slice of the Italian peninsula. Forget the easier approach of vineyard and fruit contracts […]
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