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 […]
French Wine Fund
Wine is inarguably a vehicle of pleasure to its appreciators. To some others, it is nothing more than a speculative investment vehicle. Acquiring wine without intention to see, touch, nor ever taste it defies any interpretation of the “wine lifestyle” concept. With that perspective and plenty of curious amusement I embraced the week’s news of French authorities […]
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 […]
Olivier B Cotes du Ventoux Winery Rescued By Bloggers
A wine story rightfully deserving its own screenplay has unfolded in the Cotes du Ventoux. Scripted by French wine bloggers leveraging the social web, then serially turbocharged by social media’s influence on traditional media, the Olivier B Winery has apparently been rescued from the edge of wine making extinction. Any film highlighting this southeastern Rhone wine producer’s story […]
Clos Rougeard Saumur-Champigny 2005: Best Wine This Year
I am fortunate to taste more than one man’s fair share of special wine every month. Tonight, in the context of a business dinner at Momofuku Ssam Bar with a young, smart, scrappy, web marketing guru from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, we experienced the most compelling red wine I have tasted this year, and most probably one […]
Languedoc Tasting: Expressive Wines and Multiple Styles
Some things about the Languedoc just don’t seem very French at all. Frontier lands, Spanish culinary influence, Gypsy lore, uncontrolled wine production, and more. In a recent visit to the edge of the region’s northwest Mediterannean shoreline, Camargue, we reveled in almost unlimited sightings of wild white horse and pink flamingo from the comfort of […]
Clos de la Roilette: Age Worthy Gamay from Fleurie
An Easter ham dinner set the legitimate stage for tasting one of several newly acquired bottles of Coudert’s 2008 Clos de la Roilette from Louis/Dressner Selections. Tinged with intrigue and mystery, the vineyard was originally classified Moulin-a-Vent before Fleurie was declared into existence back in the ’20s, causing an angered owner to spite France’s wine market by […]