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Why Tasting Notes Are Essential for Learning About Wine
Photo: Ryutaro Tsukata (via Pexels) At one point or another, we’ve all been on the receiving end of revisionist history, the human brain’s tendency to reframe - or even rewrite - the past, even when it seeks to conform to a false, self-serving narrative of cognitive dissonance.
Women Take the Lead at Sonoma's Bacigalupi Vineyards
Out of the dozen or so virtual, online, live sample tastings in which I’ve participated the last several months (necessitated due to the COVID-19 pandemic), I might have been looking forward to the one with Bacigalupi Vineyards the most.
Elegant Pinot Noir from California's Closest Vineyard to the Pacific Ocean
Add yet another locale to the list of gorgeous places that I’m supposed to be visiting, but the opportunity for which has been denied to me due to the current pandemic: Fort Ross Vineyard on the Sonoma Coast.
Tasting Oregon's Less Explored Wine Regions
Well, that was unexpected. Or, I should say, unexplored?. Thanks to COVID, I’m primarily traveling the world from the chair in front of my OG desktop computer, receiving samples and tasting invites that are presented virtually (but imbibed in person, of course, when it comes to the actual wine part). Such was the case recently with a virtual master class called Unexplored Oregon, presented by theOregon Wine Board and MC’d by Master of Wine Bree Stock (and, in a cute coincidence, utilizing the excellent Master the World tasting kit format that I got to test drive recently for Napa Valley Wine Academy).
Exploring Sonoma's Best Pinot Noir Vineyards with Gary Farrell
As the Coronavirus has most of us sipping while we SIP (Shelter-in-Place), the wine media world has been (in lieu of our normal mode of being able to travel to experience wines directly and visit the people and places that make them) undergoing a plethora of “virtual” tastings.
Tasting the Enduring Link Between Sonoma Wine and California Novelist Jack London
Wine and art congruences (is that actually a noun?) tend to be mostly marketing hype more often than not. So it’s especially fun when one turns out to not only be legit, but also LIT. At least, that’s the impression I got during one of my more recent Zoom-enabled, Covid-era online media tastings.
The Greatest California Vineyard You've Never Heard Of
Well, you may actually know about it, but that would certainly put you in better shape than I was when my friend and sommelier legend Randy Caparoso kidnapped me from Premiere Napa Valley one February, insisting that I escape St. Helena and instead spend some time in Lodi to see some down-home, old school wine farming.
From the Stage to the Vineyard with Recording Artist Boz Scaggs
What do you do after you’ve more-or-less totally conquered the R&B/Pop and Jazz worlds, and have become so successful in the music biz that one of your backup bands goes on to become a multi-platinum-record-selling act?
So You Want To Own Your Own Vineyard? Here's Some Advice from Chaddsford Winery Founder Eric Miller
The ultimate wine geek is probably the winemaker – what budding wine geek hasn’t (at least for a minute or two) entertained the thought of growing their own grapes, and making and selling their own wine?
Will Bordeaux Still Be Wine’s Benchmark In 100 Years? (A Candid Conversation With NY Times' Eric Asimov)
The wine business had strong reactions when Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate released scores for the 2009 Bordeaux offerings – and they were in a generous mood, with nearly twenty wines garnering “perfect” 100 point scores, including the likes of Bellevue Mondotte, and Clos Fourtet, along with stalwarts such as Le Pin, Petrus, and Montrose.
Pinotage Deserves Love, Too!
Seriously. Stop hating on Pinotage. Why? Because there’s nothing “wrong” with it. I am here today to tell you that Pinotage is not bad; it is simply different. And if you don’t like this oft-maligned but more-oft-misunderstood South African cross betweenPinot noir andCinsaut, that’s your prerogative. Just stop drinking it and shut about it, already, then. I mean, Pinotage has some high-profile wine critics who are haters right now – for Pete’s sake, wine writer Lettie Teague once expressed disdain for it on her website’s homepage.
40 Years of a Tawny Port Icon
In the world of wine, there are a few images that stand the test of time and can truly be described as iconic, instantly conjuring up the history not just of a long-standing producer, but also of the entire region that producer calls home. And when you’re iconic in the world of wine, with its long historical perspective… well, then you’re just iconic, period.
Why Alsace's Rangen Wines Really Rock
I was once so smitten with Riesling from a certain Grand Cru vineyard in Austria - Rangen - that I did something that I’ve only ever done twice in ten years, which was to reach out to the U.S. PR agency dealing with Alsatian wines and ask them to book me on a media jaunt to the area, so that I could get my feet directly on those Rangen rocks. Which, luckily for me, they did.
Level Up Your Wine (Without Getting Let Down)
If you’re like most budding wine lovers (at least, those of us who don’t own our own tropical islands and private jet planes), you started getting into wine by noticing something intriguing and delicious when you tasted from a bottle with a price point somewhere in the ten to fifteen dollar range. Maybe it was a certain setting, or grape variety you hadn’t tried before, or a region that was totally new to you, or (more likely) you just got lucky with a decent bottle on sale in the end bin at your local wine shop or grocery store. Whatever the reason, you started taking notice, and then you probably started to explore other wines in that same price category.
A Deep Dive Into One of Rioja's Most Historic Wineries
There’s a scene at the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark (please don’t tell me you haven’t seen it… it’s only the greatest action/adventure flick yet made by humans) where an unnamed warehouse worker wheels a large box, presumably containing the Lost Ark of the Covenant (which turns out to be a WOMD) into a massive storage complex, through what appears to be miles of boxes stacked dozens of feet high.
An Insider’s View of Australia’s Greatest Dessert Wines
Geographic isolation engenders resourcefulness. As well as entire rooms that smell like caramel and sultanas. Let’s start with resourcefulness. When Scottish friends George Sutherland Smith and John Banks decided in the 1860s that they couldn’t wait for materials to be shipped in to them to build All Saints, a winemaking property on the bank of the Murray River in Rutherglen’s Wahgunyah, they did what any self-respecting Aussies would do; they did it all themselves. Smith and Banks went ahead and established their own brick kiln so they could make their materials; presumably in a hurry to finish, fingerprints can still be seen in the bricks where Chinese workers laid down the material that had just barely cooled.
Traveling Back In Time With Napa Wine
Jeff Smith, of Hourglass wines knows his Napa Valley wine history. Fortunately for me (more on that in a minute or two). Smith’s roots are there, as grew up in the Napa wine scene, his family having now seen the whole kit-and-caboodle; from the bootstrapping farmers who, in his words, “picked up the scattered bones of an industry after Prohibition and phylloxera,” to the influx of outsiders flush with cash and dreams of world-class vanity projects on which they could invest (squander?) their fortunes.
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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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