June 2006
Posted: Jun 28, 2006 4:03pm ET
I just spent $550 on a bottle of wine. Want to take a guess what it was. ’05 Latour? Nope. Haut-Brion? Nope. Margaux, Mouton or Lafite? Zip, zilch, nada. No, there are 15,000 to 20,000 cases made of each of those wines, and they’ll be in the marketplace from now until they mature.
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Posted: Jun 27, 2006 4:04pm ET
With the passing of Al Brounstein , we lose a pioneer of the California wine industry and a wonderful character. I remember one of my first trips to Napa in the early '90s and a visit to Diamond Creek.
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Posted: Jun 23, 2006 10:35am ET
The American palate prefers only fruit-forward wines. It’s a statement that you hear often these days – by terroir -driven wine producers and purist wine lovers who decry what they see as a trend toward a homogenization of wine styles.
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Posted: Jun 21, 2006 5:00pm ET
I sat down with Alexandra Marnier-Lapostolle the other day. The owner of Chile’s Casa Lapostolle tempted me with a complete vertical of her Clos Apalta , a blend of Carmenère, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon sourced from a small, old-vine plot in the Apalta area of Chile’s Colchagua Valley.
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Posted: Jun 16, 2006 2:59pm ET
In my Ask the Editor’s blog earlier this week, I mentioned how exciting some of the top Argentinean wines are – but how prices are also quickly rising for the best wines. I don’t begrudge a winery getting all it can for its product (assuming the quality is there), but my first responsibility is always to you the reader, the consumer – and high prices are always a bone of contention.
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Posted: Jun 13, 2006 4:11pm ET
Now it's my turn to sit in the hot seat on our "Ask the Editors" blog. My tasting beats are the Rhône and Loire valleys, along with Chile, Argentina and South Africa, so fire away—answers will start appearing on Wednesday.
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Posted: Jun 12, 2006 12:39pm ET
Just spoke to the one of the co-owners of a major Chilean winery, who related this interesting tidbit of info. They were thinking of moving to screwcap closure for some of their whites, and their Australian distributor said if they did, they would double their order.
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Posted: Jun 8, 2006 11:33am ET
Just a few days after Concha y Toro came in to show me their new small production Carmenère bottling , I met with Viña Santa Ema winemaker Andrés Sanhueza, and Kingston Family owners Courtney and Michael Kingston.
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Posted: Jun 5, 2006 12:22pm ET
One of my responsibilities here at Wine Spectator is to review the wine lists that are entered into our annual Restaurant Awards program. We received nearly 4,000 entries this year (results will appear in the Aug.
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Posted: Jun 2, 2006 8:59am ET
I was sitting with my wife at dinner, lingering over a glass of '59 Latour , watching the sheets of rain come down outside. "So, like the wine?" I asked. "Yes," she said. "Is it great?" I asked. "Yes," she said, but with slightly less conviction.
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