Blogs
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Harvey Steiman At Large
How Oregon vintners make good Pinots for less than $20
Posted: March 5, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
How much should we have to pay for good, varietally correct Pinot Noir, a wine with the requisite refinement and stylishness that does not sacrifice flavor and intensity?
Four wineries in Oregon that manage to crank out thousands of cases of Pinot Noir at $20 or less revealed secrets of the trade at the recent Oregon Wine Industry Symposium in Portland. Revelations from the winemakers will probably appall the natural wine crowd, but I will take the results in the glass. These wines routinely score in the 86 to 90 point range.
Blogs
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Harvey Steiman At Large
What do light roasts from Starbucks and Peet’s really mean?
Posted: February 29, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
Recently my eloquent colleague Matt Kramer noted that two of the nation’s coffee giants had introduced and promoted light roasts, and that this portends a shift toward more refined tastes by Americans. He argued passionately that this notion extended to wine and a turn toward more delicate, refined styles.
He might be right, but I see a very different picture.
Jan. 31, 2012 - Feb. 29, 2012 Issue
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News
Posted: February 29, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
Jan. 31, 2012 - Feb. 29, 2012 Issue
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Tasting Reports
The state’s Pinot Noirs speak of site and season with diverse styles from recent vintages
Posted: February 29, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
Blogs
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Harvey Steiman At Large
Revisiting the groundbreaking book Taste Buds and Molecules
Posted: February 20, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
It is worth casting a skeptical eye on received wisdom about wine. So much of what we think we know turns out to be wrong. Early in my gastronomic career I grabbed the wrong glass and inadvertently took a sip of red wine with my grilled salmon, only to find that it made better music in my mouth than the white wine next to it.
Received wisdom takes a beating in Taste Buds and Molecules by François Chartier (Wiley, $37). An English-language translation is set to be released March 5.
Blogs
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Harvey Steiman At Large
Scientists demonstrate that it makes sense to relate wine to music
Posted: February 15, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
As I composed a tasting note the other day, I called a particularly acidic wine “screechy.” For another wine, rich in dark chocolate character, I referred to those elements as “bass notes.” We tasters often describe wines as “harmonious” and individual flavors as “notes.” This may not be as fanciful as it seems. A paper by two scientists in England confirms that the various smells associated with wine evoke strikingly similar musical associations in test subjects, according to an article in The Economist.
News & Features
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What We're Drinking Now
Achával-Ferrer Malbec Mendoza 2010
Posted: February 15, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
Blogs
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Harvey Steiman At Large
Ubiquitous in food, but how bad is it?
Posted: February 7, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
Although I don’t usually write about nutrition issues, the announcement last week that researchers associated with the University of San Francisco were going on the warpath against sugar got my hackles up. I have no problem with their findings—that Americans consume way too much sugar for our own good—what irritates me is how little these scientists consider quantity.
News & Features
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News
California company acquires Hickinbotham’s Clarendon property in McLaren Vale
Posted: February 2, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
Blogs
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Harvey Steiman At Large
It’s a revolutionary concept
Posted: January 31, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
A report at an industry event in California last week caused a stir when it pegged a significant portion of a healthy 4.5 percent increase in U.S. wine sales to sweet red wine. Sweet wines in general seem to be driving the bump in the wine market currently bringing smiles to the big boppers of the wine industry, the ones who count their success on how many millions of cases we buy.
