MR. WILCOX
The English High School of Istanbul of the 1970’s was a remnant of its glorious past as was the mother country it represented. It clung on to old traditions, at least on the surface. Beset by endless financial difficulties, the school seemed to hold together by a thread, and indeed disintegrated several years after my graduation in 1974. But in the late 1960’s, when I entered it, these traditions, not yet eroded by financial cutbacks were still very much alive.They included a proper uniform befitting the fortunate children of the British upper class, and an extensive sports program practiced in[...]
A SIMPLE AND SATISFACTORY WINE
I generally shy away from immersing myself in the details of technical winemaking. I figure I am a member of the "audience", and for me it's the "performance" that counts, rather than what it took to produce it. Having said that, after 15 plus years of wine tasting, it is impossible to ignore some winemaking techniques. Take the demonstrated bottle as an example. It is an offering from a monthly wine club I belong to in a San Francisco wine shop. It is a Gigondas, an appellation near the famed Chateauneuf du Pape region of Southern Rhone. The wines here,[...]
FOLIO; THE NEWEST TALE IN THE MONDAVI SAGA
Is there life after CEO tenure in one of the best known wineries in the world? For Michael Mondavi, there certainly seems so. Michael, the eldest son of the famed Robert Mondavi, who passed away in 2008, ran his father's famed wine conglomerate, located both in Oakville for the high end Robert Mondavi label, and in Lodi, producing the lower end, higher volume Woodbridge, for many years. In September 2004 he resigned his position in what had by then become a faltering publicly traded company, and within a few months, in December 2004 Robert Mondavi Winery was sold to Constellation[...]
A REVELATION ABOUT PINOT NOIR GEOGRAPHY
An old Turkish proverb goes, "it's not who reads a lot that's knowlegable, it's who travels a lot". A suitable point for the middle ages when what you read was mostly religious dogma, but what you saw in journeys, arduous and dangerous as they were, was more valuable. Nowadays the proverb no longer applies, except that is, in the wine world. Have you ever tried to read about some complex wine geography like Bordeaux or Burgundy and gotten totally confused? What about the hundreds and hundreds of wineries of California in what is now a dizzying array of appellations? When[...]
SYRAH CRASH
Magazines that take ads from winemakers and have a vested interest in promoting wine consumption generally have a tendency to report bad news in tangential euphemisms or positive spins. I am referring to such publications as Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast or The San Francisco Chronicle wine pages. Thus an ugly reality was presented in starkly blunt terms in a magazine that is not primarily wine oriented. In an article entitled "Left Out in the Cold", San Francisco Magazine (June 2010 edition) proclaimed that the California Syrah market has collapsed. Various makers, sellers and distributors were quoted as complaining that they[...]
A MALBEC BEGINNING
Sometimes it is difficult to draw take-home conclusions from theme-tastings involving less than 10 bottles of wine. I experienced such an anticlimax last month with a Chilean Carmenere tasting. They all tasted like California Cabarnet or Merlot. I found no distinguishing features that would allow easy identification in a blind tasting. Imagine my pleasant surprise last night when another South American star yielded a much more conclusive experience. Our goal was to experience Malbec, the Argentinian version. This is a grape that many in my wine circle taste on occasion, but not with a frequency that would allow easy familiarity.[...]