Bordeaux improves through cellaring; nothing new about that. A long time ago I joined a group dinner to taste claret with Clive Coates and he drew something like this to explain a cultural gap in patience, along wines’ life trajectories, between British and American wine enthusiasts: At a very recent dinner I hosted for a group of business […]
Top Three Wines: Saint-Emilion and Rhone Valley
One quick scan of my January tasting notes and I immediately knew which three wines produced greater reward than any other. All are French, two from the southern Rhone Valley and one from Saint-Émilion. Besides common French ancestry, all three rank as intense values in their own class. The 1994 Vieux Telegraph recompensed fifteen years […]
Sur Lie and Bottle Aged Muscadet in May
Years ago on a bright seventy degree afternoon, moments after tying off our boat in the Camargue’s picturesque Marseillan port, I fell in love with Muscadet and its Melon de Bourgogne grape lounging in a simple oyster restaurant’s tiny outdoor courtyard. It was a magical few hours. I was taken by the wine’s satiating freshness, crisp acidity, […]
2008 Bordeaux Vintage Tasting
The Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux just rolled across America on a four city press and trade tour with more than one hundred different Chateau owners, representatives, and wines representing and promoting the 2008 vintage from thirteen different appellations. Normally, for fun, context, and some learning I’ll pour two different vintages of the same […]
Top Three Wines of December
France scores a smooth hat trick in the WineZag “Top Three Wines” December round up. This holiday month provided ample opportunity to drink a lot of great, and not so great, wine with boastful price tags and venerable credentials. These WineZag “top three” wines are especially worthy, all offering pinnacle palate moments that stand out […]
2009 Beaujolais Tasting Highlights and Controversy
Seventeen tasters eagerly participated in our highly anticipated 2009 blind Beaujolais tasting. While the air in my home was continually pierced by clinking glassware, the halls of Boston University’s Elizabeth Bishop Wine Resource Center were most definitely hushed while several of its students, graduates, and instructors were firmly planted around our tasting table dissecting glass after […]
Three Sparkling Wines Upstaged By Patricia Boyer-Domergue’s Profound Minervois
We rightfully anchored our post graduation ceremony celebration with a potpourri of sparklers including two that previously received favorable reviews here, NV Chidaine Montlouis Methode Traditionelle Brut Loire and NV Aubry Brut Premier Cru, Champagne plus a really interesting and exotic sparkling Malvasia Dell’Emilia value that you will read about at WineZag soon. But on this late afternoon […]
A Taste of Loire, Burgundy, and Bordeaux: Replaying Four Remarkable Wines
Louis needed to miss our 2000 Bordeaux tasting. Instead, he was happily conflicted by a commitment to host dinner at his home for a group of thirty like-minded, active community members dedicated to the preservation and improvement of a local school system’s already profound results. Louis was intending to pair each of the evening’s […]
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 […]
Blind Tasting Series Report Part II: 2000 Bordeaux
The kaleidoscope of quality wine in market channels at any given time serves as decoy and easy distraction from the simple truth of Bordeaux’s classic performance and superior drinking experience. My cellared claret sits ignored and unmoved for long stretches of time while I uncork wines with age-worthiness generating far less confidence. The second flight of 2000 […]