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 […]
Top Three Wines From Valpolicella, Loire, and Alsace
Looking backwards over a month of tasting in order to pick the Top Three Wines is an ambiguous endeavor. Imagine one full month of visiting different amusement parks every week. You climb onto one hundred different rides before picking the top three in hindsight. What’s the criteria? The most unique design? How about the rides that made […]
Three-Step Classic Wine List Gameplan
Drawing up the perfect attack on a classic restaurant wine list creates the same adrenaline level NFL coaches experience prepping for Sunday games. At least it seems that way; it’s both exciting and nerve wracking knowing one or two calls can define a dinner’s outcome. Planning is required. Have we worked with the restaurant’s wine […]
Top Three Wines – Roagna, Huet, and A Donkey & Goat
The fact these three wines rose to the top of an epically long list of compelling wines place them in a class of their own. One is from Sierra Foothills vineyards and a small young Berkeley, California winery while the other two are firmly ensconced in their old Barbaresco and Vouvray regions. A bonus to last month’s wine […]
Loire Chenin Blanc Tasting Makes Case To “Just Drink”
We kicked off our Boston blind tasting group’s 2011 season comparing a dozen chenin blancs mostly from the Loire Valley. A fascination with blind tasting connects all the way back with my earliest attempts to learn about wine twenty five years ago. There is no easier way for for me to identify the unique characteristics […]
Palate Press Uncorks Swartland Revolution
Earlier this summer (winter in South Africa’s Swartland wine growing subregion) I had the chance to mix it up with the drivers of the Swartland Revolution; the winemakers. Ever since I began to comprehend the unusually high authenticity and quality levels of the upstart region’s wines, I started sharing information about individual pieces of the […]
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 […]
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 […]