November 2012
Winemaking consultants are neither mercenaries nor miracle workers
Posted: Nov 29, 2012 11:00am ET
Is it possible
to make 62 different wines, from different vineyards, and have each one taste
not just outstanding but also distinctive?
Philippe Cambie
is the top winemaking consultant in Châteauneuf-du-Pape—he works for 25
wineries in the appellation. He also has 37 other clients, mostly in the
Southern Rhône Valley, but also in the Languedoc (where he grew up), Provence,
Corsica, Spain and even Macedonia. His wines routinely score outstanding and
classic in Wine Spectator's blind tastings. I profiled Cambie in our Nov. 30
issue and found him to be a warm, friendly, complex man. Watching him
interact with his clients was fascinating.
But is it such a
good idea for one man to produce wines for 62 clients?
Read More
From the historic aging of whiskies in Sherry barrels to more radical practices of today, the two drinks toast each other
Posted: Nov 20, 2012 11:30am ET
Kingsley Amis, writing in 1972's On Drink, relayed a recipe for a concoction he had heard to be "Queen Victoria's Tipple." Ingredients: 1/2 tumbler red wine, Scotch. "The quantity of Scotch is up to you, but I recommend stopping a good deal short of the top of the tumbler," cautioned Amis. "Worth trying once," cringed the author, who in the same pages recommends waking up to a shot of tequila in one hand and one of tomato juice in the other.
I asked Logan Leet, winemaker at River Bend Winery in Kentucky, whose signature Bourbon Barrel Red is given a brief spin through used bourbon barrels, if he had ever heard of this kind of abomination in Louisville. "Most people like to keep their wine and their bourbon separate, by and large," he assured me.
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Pro tips for navigating dress codes of the wine world
Posted: Nov 15, 2012 10:00am ET
Walk-around
tastings. Auctions. Winemaker dinners. The wine world has no shortage of social
gatherings, and with each event comes the seemingly silly, yet kind of
important question: What should you wear?
In these days
when hoodie-clad tech execs top the Forbes 400 and Malvasia gets more attention
than Meursault on Brooklyn wine lists, yes, you can wear whatever you want to
wine events. End of story. What's really important at these things is the company
you keep and what's in your glass, etc., etc.
But let's get
real. It's telling that many comments on Talia Baiocchi's blog post last week
about a new generation of Napa winemakers revolved not around stylistic
decisions in winemaking, but the clothes winemakers wear—specifically whether
it was apt to describe 1980s Napa as "linen-wearing." Clearly, this stuff
matters.
Read More
Let's stop pretending the person making the wine doesn't matter
Posted: Nov 8, 2012 11:00am ET
"I am a winemaker. Not a shepherd or a steward." Sine Qua Non founder Manfred Krankel spoke those
words during the third day of Wine Spectator's New World Wine
Experience, and I started clapping. Then I realized I was the only person
clapping in a room packed with 800 people and sheepishly stopped. I shouldn't
have.
The Wine Experience is Wine
Spectator's annual
gathering of the best winemakers in the world for three days of
tasting, talking and having fun. The whole weekend provides a chance to
discover some great terroirs-you
can taste wines from more than 200 wineries, often from regions you've never
tried-and chat with the people behind the wines. The winemaker or owner is
often the one pouring. It's a chance to learn from some of the best.
But I often feel like people
who work in wine (or write about it) like to pretend that winemakers don't
actually matter. A decade ago, some consulting winemakers like Michel Rolland
and Carlo Ferrini got a lot of attention. Today, so many producers I speak to
insist that they are merely stewards of the vineyard. When they make the wine,
they just try to let the vineyard speak for itself.
Read More
