Blogs
:
Bruce Sanderson Decanted
A group of growers is raising the quality bar in the Mâconnais
Posted: September 16, 2011 By Bruce Sanderson
One of the best sources of white Burgundy values is the Mâconnais. In the past 10 or so years, it has been a hotbed of activity, with an upsurge in quality from young growers and merchants. In addition, producers from the Côte d'Or—notably Dominique Lafon, Domaine Leflaive and Louis Jadot—have invested there.
I spent a day earlier this year with a group of growers called Les Artisans Vignerons de Bourgogne du Sud. The 21 members grow grapes throughout the Mâconnais from a mix of different terroirs. They share a common goal of exploiting their vineyards in a way that best transmits an expression of place. As a group, they have old vines and farm for low yields. Some, but not all are certified organic or biodynamic.
Blogs
:
Exploring Wine with Tim Fish
Crush in California is a whole lot of nothing so far as winemakers play waiting game
Posted: September 14, 2011 By Tim Fish
California winemakers don't usually have time to talk this time of the year, but this week they're chatty. The 2011 harvest is more or less underway. Sort of. Let's just say that grapes have been picked, a few anyway, mostly whites and for sparkling wine.
Yep, the season is running late again this year, and while the size of the crop is generally small, winemakers aren't complaining.
Blogs
:
James Laube's Wine Flights
…are the people you share it with
Posted: September 9, 2011 By James Laube
On a weekend when most Americans will reflect on the tragedies of 9/11, remember that in wine, as in life, it's always about the people.
If wine is part of your life this weekend, as I expect it will be, enjoy it with those you care the most about. At the end of the day, it's always about the people, and if you can share your best wines with your best friends, then consider yourself wealthy.
Blogs
:
Stirring the Lees with James Molesworth
The Rhône wine becomes the first non-Bordeaux French wine to be offered by Bordeaux-based négociants
Posted: September 7, 2011 By James Molesworth
Wine Spectator senior editor James Molesworth reports that the Southern Rhône Valley's Château de Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape Hommage à Jacques Perrin Grande Cuvée 2009 is being offered by France's Place de Bordeaux, the first non-Bordeaux wine to do so.
Blogs
:
Harvey Steiman At Large
A fine line separates wines with finesse from those that are just too light
Posted: September 6, 2011 By Harvey Steiman
Tasting last week through a couple dozen Oregon Pinot Noirs, mostly 2009s—and therefore quite fragile in structure—I found myself musing over why some of them made my eyes light up while others just seemed weak.
Some of my friends, those who prefer wines with transparency and nuanced qualities, would probably have loved all of them. This is the kind of wine, they might say, that's so hard to find in this era of big flavor (and often big alcohols). Others, the folks who like bigger, bolder wines, might have dismissed them all as wimpy.
Me, I am a wine omnivore. I like big, bounding Syrahs and sleek, racy Pinot Noirs. Even within the Pinot Noir category, I can appreciate the richness and plushness of some of the bigger wines even though my ideal for the grape is a wine with more transparency than density.
Blogs
:
Harvey Steiman At Large
Consistently outstanding 2008 reds, and more to come
Posted: September 1, 2011 By Harvey Steiman
Mike Januik has gone from strength to strength with supple, subtle wines at his own winery and Novelty Hill in Washington.
Blogs
:
Exploring Wine with Tim Fish
A toast to this summer's missed wine opportunities
Posted: August 31, 2011 By Tim Fish
There was a story I read once about a comedian—I think it was W.C. Fields—who was asked if he kept a notepad by his bed at night in case he thought of something funny. He replied, no, if it wasn’t funny enough to remember, it wasn’t funny enough.
I feel that way about drinking wine. Notice I said drinking, not tasting. Those are two different things. One is work and the other is fun. I taste and take notes on thousands of wines every year for the magazine, but I’ve never been the sort of wine geek that scribbles comments down about every last wine I drink. I remember the wines that deserve to be remembered.
Blogs
:
Bruce Sanderson Decanted
Notes from several Brunello verticals I've tasted since returning from Italy in April
Posted: August 29, 2011 By Bruce Sanderson
Since my visit to Tuscany in April, I have had opportunities to taste quite a few Brunellos di Montalcino thanks to visiting producers. The first was Col d'Orcia, whose export manager Paola Tealdi presented six vintages of its single-vineyard Poggio al Vento Riserva. Lunch with Riccardo Illy of the Illy coffee company provided the setting for an introduction to his Montalcino estate, Mastrojanni. Francesco Ripaccioli, whose family owns the Canalicchio di Sopra estate, stopped by Wine Spectator's office with almost a dozen bottles spanning 2006 to 1995, including the recently bottled 2006 Riserva.
Blogs
:
Harvey Steiman At Large
Good food, but the Las Vegas hard-sell gets wearisome
Posted: August 26, 2011 By Harvey Steiman
When Rick Moonen opened RM Seafood in Las Vegas in 2005, he was like a breath of fresh air. The chef did not extend an existing restaurant empire. Instead he moved from New York, where his Oceana was an insider's favorite for seafood, settled in Las Vegas, and introduced the idea of sustainable, beautifully prepared fresh seafood to the desert.
I love the food, particularly the appetizers. We had a pristine sashimi of fluke, slices of of the fish folded with razor-thin lemon slices into a delicate flower. The vibe is different today, however, and I am not sure I like how it has changed.
Blogs
:
Harvey Steiman At Large
Changes at Oregon wineries and the Inn at Red Hills
Posted: August 24, 2011 By Harvey Steiman
On Calkins Lane at the edge of the Chehalem Mountains in Oregon's Willamette Valley, a beautifully tended 23-acre vineyard stands next to the pretty Bergström winery, where Josh Bergström makes some of the best wines in Oregon. The biodynamically farmed vines belong to Paul de Lancellotti and his wife, Kendall Bergström-de Lancellotti, who is Josh Bergström's sister. In the winery, Bergström has been making the wines from this vineyard, most going into a single-vineyard bottling for Bergström Wines, some for de Lancellotti's own bottling.
It was all looking so cozy, but behind the scenes there were family tensions that have resulted in wrenching changes for both wineries and for the Inn at Red Hills, which had been started and managed by Kendall.
Blogs
:
Exploring Wine with Tim Fish
Retrospective tasting of 1991 and 2001 prove the contrary
Posted: August 24, 2011 By Tim Fish
Zinfandel ages well.
There! I said it. You wanna make something of it? Huh?
Because I’m not flapping my gums just for the breeze. I have proof. Sure, folks will tell you that Zin won’t get better with age, that you should drink them fast before all that snazzy fresh fruit fades into oblivion.
BLTs for me are in the same wine-pairing pool as a hamburger with all the fixings. You can’t simply be guided by one ingredient; there’s a potpourri of flavors and textures to consider, from sweet and acidic to smoky and creamy.
Blogs
:
Harvey Steiman At Large
Hestia and Zero One take different routes
Posted: August 19, 2011 By Harvey Steiman
Two newish wineries in Washington that deliver outstanding wine at relatively moderate prices represent different ways of getting there. One left a big bank to take a chance on starting his own winery. The other parlayed 15 years selling others' wines into a smart-business wine venture.
Neither Hestia nor Zero One involves planting a vineyard and growing grapes. Instead they're starting off slow by making a limited number of wines, getting their grapes from established growers. They both focus on a few wines and have an idea about how to establish an identity to us consumers.
Blogs
:
James Laube's Wine Flights
Jean Phillips recently purchased a Napa vineyard, but don't expect another cult sensation—she wouldn't want one
Posted: August 19, 2011 By James Laube
Don't bet on Jean Phillips breeding another Screaming
Eagle. She did it once, her way, on her own terms, and that was more than
enough for this ever so private former vintner.
Blogs
:
Exploring Wine with Tim Fish
When it comes to pairing wine with BLTs, it’s all about the fun
Posted: August 17, 2011 By Tim Fish
The kids go back to school this week and the farmers markets are bringing in a few Early Girls from the Central Valley, so it’s finally BLT time. My colleague Jennifer Fiedler’s 8 & $20 recipe put me in the mood, and over the weekend I got into an entertaining discussion on Twitter about the best wines to drink with a BLT.
BLTs for me are in the same wine-pairing pool as a hamburger with all the fixings. You can’t simply be guided by one ingredient; there’s a potpourri of flavors and textures to consider, from sweet and acidic to smoky and creamy.
Blogs
:
James Laube's Wine Flights
Some wineries are using temperature-sensitive labels to track whether or not their wines overheat during shipping
Posted: August 11, 2011 By James Laube
For years there has been talk among those in the wine trade about creating a seal, or band that would indicate if a wine had been exposed to excessive heat. That is, the indicator would change colors if a shipment had overheated at any point during the delivery process. The technology is there, so why aren't more wineries using them?
Blogs
:
Harvey Steiman At Large
An evening-long taste of the new frontiers of food
Posted: August 11, 2011 By Harvey Steiman
The green color of the peas popped, and the intensity of their flavor was mightily impressive, balancing the velvety texture of a perfectly pink fillet of Copper River King salmon. The jus poured around it looked clear and tasted of pure fresh peas. Was it a reduction? A broth flavored with pea shoots?
No, it was pure pea juice, extracted by pureeing fresh peas and separating the juice in a centrifuge. This was the 17th dish of a 30-course marathon in the Seattle-area kitchen laboratory of Nathan Myhrvold, meant to demonstrate some of the up-to-the-minute techniques included in Modernist Cuisine, his landmark set of cookbooks released earlier this year.
Blogs
:
Exploring Wine with Tim Fish
Veterans of this unsung wine region are being joined by a new generation of winemakers
Posted: August 10, 2011 By Tim Fish
Whenever I write about the Sierra Foothills, I always call Bill Easton because he’ll tell you what he thinks, not what you want to hear. In these salad days of online news media, the rule seems to be “decide the story first, then fill in the blanks.” Chalk it up to my nights covering mayhem and BS at a daily newspaper, but I like being thrown a curve ball. That’s when you learn something.
Easton took umbrage—and he’s an umbrage taker from way back—when I said the Foothills were like the Finger Lakes and Long Island wine regions in New York, well-regarded by those in the know but largely undiscovered by the wine masses. He asked: Why compare? “Bordeaux may be like Napa may be like Barossa Valley may be like Stellenbosch.” Easton said. “It is what it is.”
Blogs
:
Harvey Steiman At Large
Young chef makes a splash near a tree-lined waterway
Posted: August 9, 2011 By Harvey Steiman
The Book Bindery in Seattle has been setting off the kind of buzz among local foodies that I haven't heard in a while there. The individual elements looked auspicious. Its chef previously worked his way up to executive sous at Per Se, Thomas Keller's New York restaurant with the big reputation, and it's linked with an urban winery. I hadn't tasted the wines yet, but they just won a basket full of medals from the San Francisco International Wine Competition.
Blogs
:
Exploring Wine with Tim Fish
Getting all philosophical while walking in a 120-year-old vineyard
Posted: August 3, 2011 By Tim Fish
Note to self: Whenever you hear someone grumble that California lacks the wine pedigree of Europe, remember the day you walked through San Lorenzo vineyard with Pete Seghesio and his boys.
It was one of those mid-summer Sonoma County mornings when the fog scares off early and the heat rises at you like exhaust from the dirt. Joe and Will were chasing each other in ATVs around the outskirts of the vines as Pete showed me the oldest patch of grapes in San Lorenzo, a 7-acre parcel near the Russian River in Alexander Valley.
"The deed for the ranch goes back to 1896," said Seghesio, whose great-grandfather Frank Passalacqua paid 10 gold coins for it. The copy of the deed is framed on the wall of his house, which overlooks the vineyard, and it refers to "seven acres of young vines."
Blogs
:
Harvey Steiman At Large
Bin 150 is from Marananga, a subregion of Barossa Valley
Posted: August 3, 2011 By Harvey Steiman
Penfolds winemaker Peter Gago stopped by the other day to show off his latest wine. Unfortunately, it will not be available in the U.S. until the next vintage, but given the response in Australia to the new Bin 150 Shiraz, which comes entirely from grapes grown in the Marananga District of the Barossa Valley, I was eager to try it.
