Source: http://www.wine4freaks.com/41/2007-sauternes-barsac/
Riesling, Riesling, and more Riesling was originally posted on Wine Peeps. Wine Peeps - Your link to great QPR wines from Washington State and beyond.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WinePeeps/~3/cBuKHj8aQeg/
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gangofpour/uncZ/~3/B6SOeq6whCw/alan-kerrs-august-17th-release
Source: http://thegrapesaroundtexas.com/2013/04/14/duchman-2010-gsm/
Source: http://www.wine4freaks.com/33/2007-medoc-5-grand-cru-classe/
Source: http://thegrapesaroundtexas.com/2013/05/31/cripple-creek-company-bastrop-texas/
Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot Pinot Noir Syrah or Shiraz Zinfandel
WINE KILLS. This is what a wine trade group in France foresees on wine labels. Did you miss which country this is? FRANCE. You know, the country that might as well be the first child of Bacchus, a land that’s been growing vines since the Gauls were in charge, where kids in black and white […]
The post France: wine trade says “non” to possible measures appeared first on Dr Vino's wine blog.
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Phelps Pastiche Ritchie Creek Rochioli Rosenblum St. Clement
Robert learned how to appreciate and make wine from his grandfather, Guido Raggihianti. When his grandfather died in 1986, Robert inherited the home and all the winemaking equipment, including a 100-year-old basket press. That press is still used today along with many old fashioned and artisan winemaking techniques
The post Charter Oak Winery – something different in St. Helena appeared first on Napa Valley Wine Blog.
Source: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/napablog/charter-oak-winery/
Source: http://www.wine4freaks.com/41/2007-sauternes-barsac/
Robert learned how to appreciate and make wine from his grandfather, Guido Raggihianti. When his grandfather died in 1986, Robert inherited the home and all the winemaking equipment, including a 100-year-old basket press. That press is still used today along with many old fashioned and artisan winemaking techniques
The post Charter Oak Winery – something different in St. Helena appeared first on Napa Valley Wine Blog.
Source: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/napablog/charter-oak-winery/
New York law states prohibits wine shipments from New Jersey retailers to NYS residents. But you’d never know it since New Jersey is home to many wine shops that sell wine online to New York and beyond. One of the state’s highest profile retailers is Wine Library, popularized by Gary Vaynerchuk who once streamed 1,000+ […]
The post NY Liquor Authority to Wine Library: “immediately cease and desist” appeared first on Dr Vino's wine blog.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/GuSC/~3/DJCH4Q_kOVY/
Stag\\\'s Leap Stags\\\' Leap Santa Barbara Shafer Shafer Firebreak
We arrived at 10:50 am and although they don't open until 11:00 there was already a line twenty people deep, many of whom were eager to document their experience by taking pictures with their smartphones. The real pros (Yelp Elite types, not pictured here) wielded Nikon cameras with large lenses. There was a palpable "America loves the new" feeling in the air.
Champagne Sparkling White Wine Rose Alex. Vall. Vyds Andrew Murray
I?m not sure why an official wine region is needed, but nonetheless that is how it is. The benefit for the Napa Valley wineries and related industries is plenty of PR, and the only wines poured at all the official venues for America?s Cup are from the Napa Valley.
The post Napa Valley Taste of Victory appeared first on Napa Valley Wine Blog.
Source: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/napablog/napa-valley-taste-victory/
WINE KILLS. This is what a wine trade group in France foresees on wine labels. Did you miss which country this is? FRANCE. You know, the country that might as well be the first child of Bacchus, a land that’s been growing vines since the Gauls were in charge, where kids in black and white […]
The post France: wine trade says “non” to possible measures appeared first on Dr Vino's wine blog.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/GuSC/~3/GddYrIRQt34/
The Steve Jobs Of Wine: Winemaker Paul Hobbs originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Winecast/~3/RLsXsgc_9wI/
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/0KjB-LdU1U0/
WINE KILLS. This is what a wine trade group in France foresees on wine labels. Did you miss which country this is? FRANCE. You know, the country that might as well be the first child of Bacchus, a land that’s been growing vines since the Gauls were in charge, where kids in black and white […]
The post France: wine trade says “non” to possible measures appeared first on Dr Vino's wine blog.
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@robertdwyer @churylo lol....Juan Gill Monastrell $43 or Muga Reserva Rioja 2008 $79 jump out of the list at me....or Termes @ $65I'd had the Termes and Muga before, and enjoyed them both, but I'd never tasted this bottling from Juan Gil before. I've enjoyed George's Monastrell picks in the past so I was excited to try the Juan Gil.
? George Miliotes (@TheWineExpert) May 2, 2013
Robert learned how to appreciate and make wine from his grandfather, Guido Raggihianti. When his grandfather died in 1986, Robert inherited the home and all the winemaking equipment, including a 100-year-old basket press. That press is still used today along with many old fashioned and artisan winemaking techniques
The post Charter Oak Winery – something different in St. Helena appeared first on Napa Valley Wine Blog.
Source: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/napablog/charter-oak-winery/
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/_g4iLqC4p4k/
Source: http://thegrapesaroundtexas.com/2013/03/27/5-point-chardonnay-2011/
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” said a very wise John Lennon and that’s exactly what has happened with me. My life has kept apace, even as I’ve made plans to be a respected wine writer.
By most standards, 2011 has been a very good year. I was a three-time finalist in the Wine Blog Awards, earning notice in the Best Overall Wine Blog, Best Industry Blog and Best Writing categories. I started contributing a wine column to Forbes.com. This site was named the 2nd most influential blog (and most influential wine blog) out of 4,000 blogs in a 2011 Wine, Beer and Spirits study by eCairn, a software company specializing in community and influencer marketing. I was a panelist at Vino2011 in New York City, I won a scholarship to the Wine Writer’s Symposium in Napa Valley, and I turned down enough worldwide wine trip offers to fill a two-month calendar.
Yet, wine writing has exacted a toll. I approach anything I do with a zeal and fervor that ensures me the success that I want and I’ve treated my wine writing as a full-time second job, to go alongside the job that I already have that requires 50 + hours a week.
Balance isn’t something that I’ve ever been very good at—possessed of an unassuming mien, a Midwestern work ethic, and a mental make-up whereby I cast myself as the underdog means that I am continually trying to prove something to myself, often times at the expense of real, true priorities.
Even more challenging is the fact that my standards for myself have been raised even as I’ve honed my writing chops. Instead of figuring out a system to find time shortcuts, the amount of time it takes for me to write has become more deliberate and expansive while my interest in writing has become more professional in nature – less blogging and more credible journalism requiring more work to exceed the bar that I’ve set for myself.
The net result of this, after full-time job plus wine writing, is the rest of my life has received scant attention for nearly seven years and I’ve created a nearly untenable situation for myself, a set of internal expectations that I can’t live up to, requiring a time commitment that I can’t manage.
However, most importantly, the expectations and time commitments that I have assigned to my wine writing isn’t fair to the other people in my life – notably, my incredibly supportive wife, Lindsay. She has been a saint the past six years, my blogging encompassing nearly the entire duration of our 6.5 year marriage. But, she is long overdue a husband that takes the trash out without prompting!
I’ll be around the Internets – commenting on wine blogs, doing the Twitter thing, staying connected on Facebook and I’ll probably start engaging more actively on CellarTracker and on the WineBerserkers message board, but I’m taking a hiatus from wine writing to recalibrate, shifting my time to the things that are the most important to me: Family and career.
Jeff
Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/good_grape_goes_on_hiatus/
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/0KjB-LdU1U0/
White Wine Champagne Sparkling White Wine Rose Alex. Vall. Vyds
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| Bodegas del Rosario Monastrell vineyards in Bullas |
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| Hard to complain about anything with this one. |
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| Look for an upcoming vintage of this at Wegman's for $5.99 |
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| Solid. A crowd pleaser. |
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| Not quite available in the US, but soon! |
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/b03svsBkbGc/five-recommended-spanish-roses.html
Source: http://www.beyondnapavalley.com/blog/the-zinfandel-festival-2012-a-new-ava-to-be-reckoned-with/
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/RyyhE1zSp1A/
Source: http://www.wine4freaks.com/41/2007-sauternes-barsac/
Coravin, a new wine preservation system, has garnered a lot of praise since its soft launch in June with the latest big piece coming from Eric Asimov in the NYT. The device uses a syringe to pierce the cork, withdraw wine, and replace the liquid with argon gas. Argon, for those who haven’t been keeping […]
The post Coravin: what is it good for? appeared first on Dr Vino's wine blog.
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You’ve never heard of Campbell Mattinson: He’s a young, urbane Australian wine wordsmith who forsakes the academically erudite and plaintive wine writing style of legends past for a muscular writing style that is jocularly loose yet incisive, showing every bit of the wunderkind talent of his global English-language contemporaries, Jamie Goode and Neal Martin.
Likewise, you probably haven’t heard of Mattison’s *new* wine book, Thin Skins: Why the French Hate Australian Wine first published in Australia in 2007 and now just released in America.
Seemingly stillborn upon its October publishing date in the states and updated with a scant epilogue where the author notes, “The headiness described in the early passages of this book is now long gone,” the book formerly offered in situ context on the boom and looming bust of the Australian wine landscape and is now something of an ipso facto think piece on the manifested reality.
With recency in absentia as one negative checkmark, Thin Skins as a body of work brooks no favors for itself either. Even when first published four years ago, it represented a compendium of articles and profile pieces, individually quite good, but collectively never quite transcending its constituent parts, especially one that supports the premise of the title. And, unlike its subject matter, time has not aged the book into cohesion.
Worse still, brought to the U.S. market by publisher Sterling Epicure, the book is likely supported with little more than the gas it takes a truck to drive a meager allotment of books to an Amazon.com warehouse and the dwindling number of Barnes & Nobles that still populate the landscape, a veritable line item in an editors’ fourth quarter publishing spreadsheet under the header, “wine.”
Thin Skins seems destined for a hastened half-life and quick retreat to the remainder bin at Half-Price Books…it’s an ignoble fate heaped upon by my damnation.
But, I’ve feinted purposefully, misdirecting by caveat because, despite everything I’ve mentioned having some inherent truth(including the author being very talented), Thin Skins is a wildly entertaining book that delivers on providing a teasing glimpse into a distinctly Aussie viewpoint on the factors that led to the Australian wine boom (Parker points, market forces, greed and drought) and in so doing the author makes three key points worth repeating:
1) The Aussie wine industry, save for its Gallo-like equivalents, is NOT happy about their country’s production being viewed globally as syrupy supermarket plonk
2) Our U.S. perception IS NOT reality regarding Australian wine; their wine industry has an abundance of refined, terroir-based wines from small vintners
3) The Aussie wine business will rise again on the international scene (in an entirely different form).
One key takeaway for me from the book is that Australia is remarkably similar to the U.S.
In the U.S., some reports indicate that 90% of the wine sold is “corporate” wine, the kind found at supermarkets across the country. However, what IS different is that 90% of our national conversation about wine focuses on the 10% of the wine production that ISN’T in the supermarket i.e. everything non-corporate – the boutique, artisan and interesting.
Yet, when it comes to Australian wine, we don’t continue our conversation about the small and beautiful. Instead of talking about the superlative, we view their entire country production through the lens of the insipid, the Yellowtail and other critters that cost $6.99 at Safeway.
American wine consumers would be rightfully indignant if the world viewed our wines not as we do, a rich tapestry, but as industrialized plonk from the San Joaquin Valley.
This is where Australian wine is at today—a ‘perception is reality’ mistake of colossal proportions.
While offering an abundance of stories from small producers along the way, Mattison suggests that while it may take time, with Australia having 162 years of winemaking history, the day will come, sooner rather than later, when Australian wine forsakes its near-term reputation and is viewed on the world stage as a wine producing country that can proudly stand next to its New World peers.
I wrote recently that I’ve noticed a slow change in tenor from American influencers regarding Aussie wine, they’re becoming more sympathetic, they’re starting to speak less dismissively and more optimistically and holistically about Australian wine, discussing the merits and great diversity in the land of Oz.
Recent Symphony IRI sales data bears this out as well. According to a Shanken NewsDaily report from this week, Australian wine in the $15 - $19.99 category rose 23% in September. In addition, growth is coming from varietals not named Shiraz (see also syrupy supermarket plonk). Instead, Semillon, Riesling and Pinot Noir are showing growth.
Still, it’s not the land of milk and honey here in the states for Aussie wine, as it once was. Overall sales are down by volume and dollars, but as Mattinson alludes the correction in the U.S. market isn’t going to be pretty, but it will be healthy and it’s quite possible that Australia will decrease in overall volume and dollar sales from persistent decline at the low-end for years to come as the high-end grows, but not at a rate to replace what was lost.
The net sum of that doesn’t balance a spreadsheet, but it does balance mindshare.
Pick-up Thin Skins if you want to get turned on to a great wine writer while also enjoying a greater understanding of Australian wine – where it has been and where it’s going—perhaps not as a future King, but definitely not in its current role as court jester.
Campbell Mattinson’s Wine Site: The Wine Front
Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/australian_wine_the_once_and_future_king/
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While it has been cited that we’re living in a “Golden Age” of wine writing, what is interesting to me these days is NOT the subject of wine writing.
My interest is in a broader understanding of the consumption of the wine writer’s output – self-identified wine interest by consumers who are seeking out wine information. This is a seismic shift more important than the vagaries of who writes what, where, when and for how much.
Something much bigger and amorphous is at work.
It used to be that people self-identified by their job or some other affiliation that produced recognition from others, a status-marker of sorts—“I work for IBM, I have two kids and we’re Protestant.”
However, nowadays, people, principally online (which is moving center stage in our life), are self-identifying by their personal interests which, often times, diverges greatly from their profession and their family situation.
Look at Twitter profiles or a body of status updates from somebody on Facebook. People are no longer duotone and defined by work and family. They’re multi-layered and complex and defined by their interests. The modern day self-description goes something like this: “Passionate about wine and travel. I build furniture, follow the San Francisco Giants, and work in a non-profit by day. I also volunteer to ensure clean water for sub-Saharan Africans. Dad to two wonderful kids”
In diamond-cutting terms, it’s more Peruzzi than table cut and it seems we’re all on a journey to be the most interesting man person in the world.
This kaleidoscopic advancement in sense-of-self is a very important development because, on an individual level, we tend to project externally how we see ourselves in the mirror. By stating publicly online that we’re a wine enthusiast, a foodie, a jazz lover, who does dog rescue and loves college football with a fascination for all things digital, it’s like writing down a goal. A goal written down means something to most people and people are likely to actuate their activities around it, even if aspirationally.
This is a very subtle point and I hope I’m conveying it faithfully: Societally, we’re changing how we view ourselves, we are stating how we view ourselves and consequently we’re more likely to pursue knowledge around those interests because we’ve put it out there.
In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we’re all self-actualizing.
So, when it comes to wine writing, while I’m very happy for Alder Yarrow’s assignment in writing a monthly column for Jancis Robinson’s Purple Pages, I also tend to look at it within a much broader context because there will be more Alder Yarrow Horatio Alger-like stories in the years to come.
More to the point however, and within a bigger picture, what Alder writes now and in the future on his own site or at Jancis’ site is likely going to be viewed by an increasingly larger audience who, based on the aforementioned self-actualization, have become more inclined to seek a wide-range of information that supports a myriad of personal interests, including wine.
This online growth in information-seeking is, indeed, a very good thing particularly for the wine business who is caught up in a focus on Gen. Y, when the more important point is that there is a mass of people of all ages who have increasingly ready access to information online that allows them to easily pierce the veil of wine. And, the implications for that for shouldn’t be understated because the view of the wine world is likely to be altered to be much more inclusive of all types of viewpoints – think the streets of New York instead of Pottery Barn.
The Kindle Fire tablet by Amazon.com may represent the next step in this evolution, driving the potentiality of mass on-the-move content delivery. No, it’s not as important as the printing press or any other God Complex hyperbole that is assigned to Steve Jobs, but it’s an important step forward nonetheless.
Where laptop computers are functional machines designed to execute work, and tablets (like the iPad) are a lightweight, portable device that act as a multi-functional hybrid between a smartphone and a laptop, here comes the Kindle Fire which is a device designed almost exclusively for content consumption, all kinds of content – blogs, digital magazines, digital books, videos, music, etc.
The Kindle Fire, to me, is a device that enhances the trend we’re seeing in the increased complexity of how we define ourselves because here’s a device that lets users pursue content around their interests anytime, anywhere and it’s reasonably affordable at $199, at least half the cost of other tablets on the market.
For example purposes, let’s say I have an interest in German Riesling, but I don’t really want to buy another paper-based book because I already have a stack of 14 books at my bedside that I haven’t read (or, perhaps, I don’t buy that many books, period). Likewise, it isn’t convenient for me to read a book on my laptop because, well, that’s not really a form factor that works for me because I’m already hunched over my laptop for 12 hours a day. In addition, I don’t want to print out a 150 page pdf because that’s paper I have to carry around. Previously, with all of the aforementioned caveats, I would have let a deep dive into knowing more about German Riesling be a fleeting thought—an opportunity that would lay fallow.
Ah, but the Kindle Fire will let me consume this German Riesling content in a nice, portable, convenient, lightweight manner that is designed to do expressly that. I’m now looking forward to pouring through Terry Theise’s 2011 German Riesling catalog and reading part II of Mosel Fine Wines 2010 vintage report.
All of this distills down to an essential takeaway: When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with movable type, the tangible output was the ability to have ready access to print books. However, the bigger impact was the spread of knowledge which led to the Renaissance period which inalterably changed the culture of the world.
That’s where I think we’re at now, particularly with wine and the spread of information. The conversation can be about who is writing and where they come from, but the conversation with far greater impact is what the end game is for this mass adoption of personal nuance lived out loud.
In simpler terms, the wine writer, like Descartes in the Renaissance era, had a great, lasting influence, but the Renaissance period was much bigger than Descartes.
The key for the wine business in this seismic shift in wine affiliation and the pursuit of information thereof is to decide whether they want to support the status quo and perpetuate business as usual or open themselves to all kinds of thought.
Wine writers already are and so are the consumers seeking out this information.
