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. […]
Top Three Wines: Northern Burgundy and California
This past month’s cascade of fascinating wines helped bid adieu to the nasty 2013 New England Spring season and usher in the familiar comforts of summertime drinking. From Napa to Chablis, three wines stubbornly replay like broken records in the piece of my brain that clings to memorable drinking vignettes. These wines, all intense values, […]
Three Top California Cabernets and Taste Buds
Thirty five of us climbed a stairway to our balcony seating perched above Cole’s Chop House’s main dining room in downtown Napa. The wine service table was crowded with a military style line up of thirty bottles of three different California Cabernets; an admittedly and deliberately ignored wine category since a self-imposed hard stop in […]
Kathryn Kennedy and California Wine
Much of the criticism aimed at California wines’ big style and bulging price tags is routinely sidestepped in old world wine producing regions. Although the extent of this is up for debate…history, subsidy, tradition, terroir, appellation controls, experience, and older vineyards form layers of insulation that restrain old world vignerons from the temptations of market […]
Rolf Binder’s 1996 Veritas Cabernet Sauvignon
How does Barossa cabernet sauvignon age? Here’s some insight based on only one example; $29.99 Rolf Binder’s 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon from his Veritas Winery. While the question deserves more exhaustive tasting with full sets of wines, this was a telling experiment using just one cabernet from a top Barossa winery. WINE BLOGGING WEDNESDAY 76: BAROSSA BOOMERANG […]
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 […]
Recommending 2007 O’Shaughnessy “Howell Mountain” Cabernet Sauvignon
September 10, 2010 was a bright sunny day in Napa Valley, warm but still not hot enough for growers dealing with tensions around the slower grape maturation associated with this year’s uncharacteristically cool west coast summer. While row after row of sun bathed thinned canopies yearned for a few more degrees of heat exposure, […]
Connecting Intellectual and Palate Learning: Tasting Two Sakes and California Cabernet
An insatiable hunger for discovery and wine education is rewarded every time I taste wines in peer groups. Without the chance to examine lots of wines every day over an extended period, even frequent tastings of one wine per sitting lays down hurdles to thorough assessment most easily cleared via contextual, side-by-side tastings. The most […]
Bottle Age Challenge: 1985 Lynch Bages vs. 1985 Chateau Montelena
I opened two $20 wines, one from Napa Valley and one from Bordeaux’s Paulliac appellation, for a few remaining tasters hanging around after our challenging 2007 Southern Rhone tasting. Don’t let the retail values throw you; price tags are acquisition costs for the 1985 Chateau Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon and the 1985 Lynch Bages that I […]
Wine Sales Stink and The World is Not Flat
In Silicon Valley Bank’s recently released Preliminary Findings Report (you won’t get a recap of all the details here, save a few, so click on the link and download the PDF if you are so inclined) which precedes their more exhaustive Spring 2010-2011 Annual State of the Wine Industry Report, the Bank’s opening salvo declared; The […]