M. Senegor

One of the nice advantages of associating with fellow wine enthusiasts is the opportunity it affords to engage in tastings  like the one we had in George Heron's house recently. A number of us dipped into our collections and sampled the current state of the 1995 Bordeaux vintage with the bottles you see in the photo. 1995 was the first great vintage in my own personal collection, there being none other since 1989 & 1990. While I have tried to stay disciplined and not open much of my '95's, over the years they have nonetheless withered away into around 8[...]

Is the current Chardonnay craze, now ongoing for two decades plus, about to come to an end? Is Chardonnay on the decline, destined into the same junk heap as French Colombard or Valpolicella, favorites from another era? The backlash against this immensely popular grape began with wine snobs who created the "ABC" movement (Anything But Chardonnay). Then came a response from domestic winemakers: unaked Chardonnay, an attempt to return to the basic French Burgundian essence of the wine, and undo the excesses of oak and buttery texture New World winemakers inflicted on this wine. This weekend I discovered another response from[...]

Last night I brought the bottle in the photo to our regular Friday night wine tasting. It was a 1989 Chateau d"Armailhac, a reliable Bordeaux producer, from a good year.The way our tastings go, we each bring a bottle or two concealed in bags, we open them all and set them at a table. We then make our rounds tasting them in the order of whites first, light reds next and heavy reds last. Bordeaux invariably come at the end of the tasting. We comment on each wine and play a game of guessing what the wine is. Excited by[...]

Ever since the "Judgement of Paris" of 1976 there has been a tension between the U.S. (specifically California) and France in whose wines are better. While the question remains in the eyes of the beholder, with different wine lovers lining up on one side of the Ocean or other, comparative tastings a la 1976 have become a classic experience. When someone suggested that we pit California Cabarnet (sauvignon - that is) against the much revered Bordeaux, for the equally grand year of 1990 for both, we had an intriguing match up. And so we assembled at George Heron's house on[...]

Several years ago I visited an old college friend Kevin Cronin in his home town Philadelphia and discovered a fascinating detail about life in that city which is entirely foreign to us Californians: all their restaurants were BYOB. Through some arcane quirk in their liquor laws, restaurants were not allowed to sell wine. So they did not have any wine lists. Customers who wished to consume wine with their meals had to bring their own. And we did. In fact we found another wine enthusiast couple in that restaurant with several interesting looking bottles, and we combined forces with them[...]

Last night I said farewell to an old friend. It was the bottle you see in the photo to the left, a 1995 Chateauneuf du Pape, Vieux Telegraph. I brought it to my Friday night wine group where it was uniformly well received.1995 was a good year and last night the wine seemed at its prime. Classic nose for the region, smooth, well balanced, mellow, and yet characteristic smoky flavors and strong hints of mouvedre, which I recognize as an olive tapenade flavor. Without knowing what it was, everyone in the group exclaimed some pleasure as soon as they sipped[...]