While the US domestic wine industry continues its painful recessionary adjustments in response to the $50-plus wine category implosion and the consolidation of its distribution channels, the picture looks very different in Asia where this year’s Sotheby’s and Christie’s Hong Kong wine auction sales will outstrip their own combined New York and London volumes. As […]
Questioning the Sensibility of Bordeaux’s New Found Irrelevance
Eric Asimov helped me feel old, out of the loop, and crusty today simply because I prefer Bordeaux. Please do not crucify me en masse, and allow me to cling to a hard earned 51-year-old point of view that many of the world’s finest wines are products of Bordeaux as you join me on a visit […]
Wired for 1990 Chateau Latour
In the event you birthed a child in 1990, got married that year, or are secure in your belief that spending slightly under $700 a bottle can represent a really fine wine deal, then you will want to make sure you check out Wired for Wine at 10:00am on Monday, May 3. They will be […]
Bordeaux Matchmaking
via bordeauxmatchmaking.com Here is an interesting event coming to Boston this Friday night, November 20. A couple of French ladies matching your interests with suitable and affordable french Bordeaux and like minded new friends. A multi city tour with soirees Boredelaise style in Boston, Chicago, NY, and Miami. Certainly an unusual one-of-a-kind format. Check out […]
15 Wines in Simple Format Unlock Path To Wine Apprecation
Hosting less experienced wine drinkers to easily replicated and structured tasting formats appeals to my ritual instincts for making wine more accessible to more people. On the one hand, it’s a refreshing personal break from the usual “club” and a way to strip away the bravado and bias brought to tasting tables by hardened wine aficionados. On the other hand, it is a chance for me […]
Perennially Crystal Quail
Regulars know it’s not possible to completely describe the transcendental experience of a Crystal Quail evening. After the ritual pilgramage through the back-est of Center Barnstead, New Hampshire country roads and arriving in the middle of nowhere to find a small 18th century farmhouse glowing in the setting sun just twenty yards uphill of the rear over sized garden whose bounty is being prepped at […]
Wine Economics: A Consumer and Critic Weigh In
I have been in a digital desert for the last week, dealing with computer problems compounded by a stretch of travel without a laptop. Please excuse the brief WineZag siesta and take a quick few steps back with me to follow up on a previous WineZag post on runaway Bordeaux prices getting in the way of reasonable […]
Bordeaux Sucker Punch Ruins Wine Independence for All
Catching up on some overdue reading during the long Fourth of July holiday weekend, I was struck by a disconnect between two really interesting pieces of material. Wine enthusiasts face significant challenges that threaten a pronouncement of clipped shackles found in the primarily good spirited and reflective recent Alder Yarrow “Declaration of Independence” . Enthusiasts continue to be repressed by a profound problem, overlooked in Yarrow’s celebration of expanding wine availability and information sharing, and inadvertently demonstrated in Robert […]
When Lafite Meets Jiaozi
In case your catalogue never arrived, you can rest assured that the first fine wine auction ever held on mainland Chinese soil went off without a hitch this weekend in Beijing. A case of 1989 Petrus and 1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild sold for 320,000 yuan each ($US 47,000) and an imperiale of 1979 Chateau Latour sold for 32,000 […]
Night Club Cristal
Jimmy Metta studied business and Italian at the European Business School in London and graduated trying his hand at importing consumer electronics from China relying on a word of mouth distribution channel. He had no experience with wine and certainly no affinity for Bordeaux first growths when he serendipitously purchased a magnum of ’61 Petrus for […]