M. Senegor

"Oregon is like syphilis", I said the other day. The comment caused raised eyebrows. We were at our weekly Friday night tasting which involves sampling concealed bottles brought randomly by group members, the tasting devoid of any theme, and trying to guess what the wines are. After playing this game for over a decade, and most in our group have well trained palates, guessing varietals becomes fairly easy. Locales and vintages are harder.Many in our wine group are doctors, but not all. Doctors regularly engage in differential diagnostic thinking when evaluating a disease. The patient presents with certain clues, symptoms, physical[...]

Yesterday, while tasting a 2008 Cotes du Rhone I mentioned to a novice fellow taster that this was a not so good year. "2002 and 2008 were bad years in the Southern Rhone", I said. He soon whipped out his iPhone and double checked my proclamation with a free app he had installed from Wine Spectator. A few taps and he nodded with approval and looked back up at me, obviously impressed. "84 and 86 ratings for those years. You were right", he said. I did not consider myself much of a genius, for after all from 1998 to 2010,[...]

Celebrities no longer inhabit the world of sports and movies. The restaurant business has spawned quite a few, and now in our wine-growing corner of the world various winemakers have assumed this role. One of them if Gary Farrell, seen in the above photo. For aficionados of California Pinot Noir, he is a well known name, and his career has risen in concert with that of the varietal. His story begs the question: how valuable is a name?As a young winemaker Farrell was mentored by the likes of Rocchioli, Bynum and Dehlinger, Russian River pinot noir pioneers who in the 1980's were[...]

The late Johnny Carson used to regularly tell a joke every Christmas-time about how he thought the one same fruitcake made its rounds through all households in his Nebraska hometown. He disliked fruitcake and so did I, and I could see how this could be, exageration notwithstanding. I was reminded of Carson's fruitcake by a provocative comment uttered by Kermit Lynch (for his photo see my last blog)  in his latest newsletter. Commenting on one of his flagship labels, Domaine Tempier Bandol, he expressed curiosity as to why there isn't an aftermarket for it, since it does not appear in[...]

"Today's Bordeaux producers are essentially making California Cabarnet", said Kermit Lynch. Wow! This broad and sweeping statement is not only an affront to Napa/Sonoma, so nearby, an hour's driving distance from Kermit's famed wine bussiness in Berkeley, but also a big insult to the stodgy French winemaking establishment which has prided itself in being the original, indeed only "authentic" maker of Cabarnet magic. Hidden in the statement is a yet more grandiose shot across the bow of Robert Parker and his acolytes, from which Kermit distinguishes himself. I know, for I am one of Kermit's disciples.As I read a Wall Street Journal interview[...]

Have you ever loved a wine in a winery  and then bought it, only to find that at home, some time later, it tasted totally different? Often this experience is memorable because the wine tastes much worse than what you remembered, and you wonder why on earth you spent good money on it. If you have, join the club. Most do.In a recent trip to the northern Sonoma region, biking and wine tasting, I thought about this phenomenon. While there are several variables that contribute to this problem, in my opinion one is the biggest. First the lesser ones. The[...]