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1WineDude
Tasting the Obscure at Philadelphia's Jet Wine Bar
On a (very, very, monsoon-season-like) wet day in Philadelphia not too long, I spent some time in the basement of Philly’s Jet Wine Bar on South Street, being interviewed for a podcast by owner (and archeologist – she was about to embark on a multi-stop tour taking her to Italy, Scotland, and Iraq) Jill Weber and Brit-turned-PA-local Philip Silverstone.
Wine and Cocktails Happy Hour with Vintage Wine Estate's Katy Long
For many months since COVID-19 shelter-in-place rules and guidelines have prevented us wine industry folk from gathering live and in-person, we’ve been mixing it up by tasting samples simultaneously and meeting virtually via Zoom. In the case of the event that stars as the topic of today’s entry, however, we were literally mixing it up – as in, mixing up cocktails.
Going to the Source: Stellar Sonoma County Single Vineyard Zinfandels
Virtual (a.k.a., remote) tastings have been a thing for several years (I was eveninvolved in some of the very first… wow, remember those?!?), but they’ve positively (and virtually/figuratively) exploded during this time of sheltering-in-place..
From Columbia to Sonoma: Tasting the Wines of Alma de Cattleya with Winemaker Bibiana González
Winemaker Bibiana González was part of one of the earliest virtual sample sipping sessions that I attended nearly one year ago, so it seems fitting that her Alma de Cattleya lineup is yet again the focus in this series of tasting that was born out of necessity in 2020 when global wine travel effectively shut down.
Livermore Sets a New Standard in Top-Shelf Red Wine at Steven Kent Winery
Usually, my wine sample pool is, as my daughter likes to describe my cooking, “adequate.”. What I mean is, most of the wine samples that I receive are pretty good, if not get-you-all-diddy-like exciting; occasionally I get a sample that’s an utter dud, and occasionally I pop open a sample that’s delightfully surprising.
Tasting Zinfandel Across Sonoma's Legendary Vineyards
This late in the COVID SIP game, the entire wine industry pretty much has the ZOOM tasting thing down pat. The flurry of tasting invites has been getting intense, so much so that I’ve been having to decline several competing tastings, while also totally losing track of what sample deliveries are designated for which tasting, seriously reconsidering never buying long pants again, and having to become extremely selective in the tastings invites that I do accept.
Tasting the Soul of Sicily, In Two Wines
Things move a bit more on the rilassato (relaxed) side when you’re dealing with Sicily. And not just when it comes to wine, but when it comes to pretty much everything. Which is the excuse that I’m employing to justify only now (a few long months later) getting around to finishing up my coverage from my last wine media tour of Italy’s largest island. While I don’t exactly miss the act of traveling itself during this bizarre time of being in shelter-in-place mode, I do pretty much always miss being in Sicily. The place is just magical (and the fact that some of my ancestors hail from there probably has something to do with my affinity for the place).
Bridging the Northern and Southern Hemisphere Divide with CARO Wines
Admittedly, I kind of wanted to hate CARO. Not because of the wine, which as you’ll read in a minute or two is well worth talking about, and well worth seeking out if you enjoy very good wine and don’t want to pay too much for it (which is basically all of us, right?). No, I wanted to hate CARO because it’s just the kind of big-wine-companies-joint venture (a project between Argentina’s most awarded winery, Catena, and France’s legendary Lafite Rothschild) that is almost too clever for its own good. The operative word here being Almost.
Catching "Sparks" with the Red Wines of Italy's Masciarelli Tenute Agricole
“I grew up in the winery. Literally.” Miriam Lee Masciarelli, Brand Ambassador for Masciarelli Tenute Agricole, was basically born into the wine business. She’s a second generation Masciarelli, which nowadays pretty much means being one of the faces for all of Abruzzo wine, despite the fact that her family’s winery sits in a province with a population of only about 800 people.
Purple Brands Looks to the High-End with Scattered Peaks Napa Cabernet
Hey, remember when we used to go out and stuff like that? Man, that was awesome. I used to do that. Way, way, way back in March of 2020. Like that time that I caught up with Robert Larson and Joel Aiken at Philadelphia’s Parc restaurant to taste through Joel’s new winemaking project, called Scattered Peaks. That was back when we could all travel, and restaurants were open and stuff like that. Before we spent entire days inside in our pajamas.
Reds Shine with These Recent Lodi Wine Releases
It seems that people like to go big when it comes to their COVID shelter-in-place drinking these days. At least, that’s what I’m guessing the Lodi folks were hoping when they invited me to sample a handful of single vineyard Lodi Zinfandel releases as part of a presentation moderated by Stuart Spencer (of theLodi Winegrape Commission and St.Amant Winery), with panelists Kevin Phillips of Michael David Winery, Tegan Passalacqua of Turley Wine Cellars and Sandlands, and Jeff Perlegos, Lodi grower and owner of Stampede and Cherryhouse Vineyards.
Sonoma's Sebastiani Raises the Bar with Their Most Recent Cabernet Releases
Out of the many (many) virtual media/samples tastings I’ve taken part in remotely due to Covid-19 SiP, this one was near the top of my list as potentially most intriguing. That’s because this one was focused specifically on Sebastiani’s high-end Cabernet Sauvignon lineup (as guided by winemakers Sarah Quider and Mark Beaman), including the iconic Cherryblock – a wine I hadn’t tasted in years. I’m pretty sure that I don’t know anyone who’d decline an opportunity to taste Cherryblock… and if I do know anyone who would do that, I’m not entirely sure that I want to know them.
The Revitalization of Bordeaux's Château Lilian Ladouys
According to manager Vincent Bache-Gabrielsen, that’s the secret behind the revitalization of Saint-Estèphe’s Château Lilian Ladouys. Bache-Gabrielsen also manages Château Pédesclaux, the Pauillac property that the Lorenzetti family purchased just one year after picking up Lilian Ladouys, and which their team also revitalized. If you’re sensing a theme here, don’t congratulate yourself, because, bluntly stated, the theme is pretty obvious. And – spoiler alert! – the results are basically the same: an ailing Bordeaux producer weaned off of life support, and now celebrated as doing the rarest of all Bordeaux wine tricks: over-delivering for its price point (you can find their main red for well under $40/bottle).
Wine from Total Darkness: Tasting the First Ever "Untouched by Light" Sparkling Wine
Recently, I was invited to (virtually) taste a brand new wine release, during its world premier unveiling event. The star of what turned out to be the slightly bizarre show was the 2016 – and inaugural – vintage of Untouched by Light by Slovenian producer Radgonske Gorice (who have nearly 170 years of sparkling wine experience under their belts, though this one was brand new even to them).
Once In a Lifetime: Tasting Tokaji's Greatest Ever Wine Vintage in Hungary
I don’t want to say that every aspect of my life is firing high on all cylinders right now, because that’s rarely the case. But when you get sent to one of the most beautiful places on the globe to try excellent wines, work hard, then play hard, and get paid well to basically be yourself, it’s hard to think that life is all bad!
Inside One of Champagne's Most Famous Houses: Bollinger
In theory, it ought to be easy to hate on the Champagne house Bollinger. They’re big (producing about 3 million bottles annually); they’re kitschy-famous (getting the royal warrant from the UK market in 1884, and then becoming the official Champers of Agent 007 in the James Bond films); they’re fairly corporate (a staggering – and, one imagines, barely manageable – 175 shareholders); they have that other matriarch, the one with the famous and too-oft-cited quote about basically drinking Champagne all of the time (and let’s not forget that Lilly Bollinger originally resisted the release of a rosé, which casts serious doubts as to her sanity in my view…); and they have 5 kilometers of cellars under the town of Ay, housing 700,000 magnums full of aging wines (ok, that last bit is actually really cool).
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a.k.a. Joe Roberts. Dad, wine-writer-guy, wine critic, wine competition judge, author, bassist, free-thinker, & occasional hiney-shaker. Opening up highly-pressurized cans of whoop-a** on the wine industry since 2007. Joe is a Certified Specialist of Wine, and the author of Wine Taster’s Guide: Drink and Learn with 30 Wine Tastings.
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