Top wines this month bring together strange bedfellows including a Southern Hemisphere syrah from the long ignored vineyards in South Africa’s Swartland Cape Winelands outpost, a brilliant Burgundy from the stepchild Côte Chalonnaise village of Mercurey, and Bordeaux from a refocused producer working right bank Saint-Émilion vineyards. Each one of these wines represents strong value in […]
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 […]
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 […]
South Africa Wine Immersion, My Way
I will be swirling, tasting, and spitting in South Africa over the next couple of weeks. While I enjoy some elements of organized wine travel with groups of fellow wine geeks and writers, this trip is with family and friends on my own time and dime. Having spent 30 years in media, organized wine immersion […]
Top Five Hidden Wine & Other Treasures
I am an inflight magazine junkie, scouring the likes of Andrew Zimmern, Mark Bittman, Jason Oliver Nixon and other columnists in pursuit of the next undiscovered gem of a hidden local restaurant, hotel, wine shop, or hedonistic delight. I travel incessantly, coveting new months and issues, flipping to “tips” and “tops” pages with similar impatience […]