Wine

Does anyone find the various varietals that start with the word pinot confusing? I certainly was, for many years.They actually all are cousins originating from pinot noir, a grape that has unstable genes prone to mutations. Pinot meuniere is a red variant, often used in champagne and occasionally as a still wine similar in nose and palate to its progenitor. Pinot gris is a mutation that produces white wines, the grape known as pinot grigio in Italy. While gris and grigio are synonymous and the grapes identical, some classify them as different varietals, mainly because stylistically, the Italian expression of[...]

Our Friday night wine tasting group, free-style as it is, with anyone who wants to participate bringing any wine they wish, is sometimes conducive to wild, unbelievable coincidences. We had one recently.The format is a blind tasting, loosely ordered, with whites first, then light reds, to heavy reds, the participants attempting to guess the identity of each wine tasted. Since no-one knows what others brought, the sequence of the wines tasted is somewhat random.On this occasion, a red we sampled seemed clearly from the Southern Rhone, with hints of smoke and tobacco on the nose, a crisp, fruity entry, mild[...]

At the luxurious Masseria Torre Maizza, a few kilometers inland from the scenic fishing village of Savelletri on the shores of the Adriatic, our knowledgeable master of ceremonies Paolo, a matire'd for breakfast and lunch and sommelier for dinner, recommended the above wine to accompany seafood salad, Apulian aubergines and Adriatic fish fillet in foil. It did. Quite well.It was a Primitivo, a grape mainly cultivated in Puglia, and one we mostly encountered during our visit there in blends with other local grapes, such as Negroamaro, Aglianico and French varietals such as Merlot (keeping lock-step with other regions in Italy[...]

A frequent question I encounter, since I travel to so many wine regions so frequently, is whether I transport wine back home with me from those regions. Nowadays my answer to this is always, "no, you can find it all here in the U.S." But that's not quite true, and this curt statement does not  reflect the numerous different experiences I've  had dealing with this issue.The story starts in 1985 with a trip to Club Med in Cancun, Mexico, where I discovered Kahlua, along with a sexy Bostonian with a cute midriff. I packed a large bottle of Kahlua back[...]

In a constantly evolving wine world that I have been studying for nearly twenty years, the bottle you see in this pictures exemplifies a constant. Let me pose you a puzzle: what's wrong with this label?The wine, which we tasted blind during our weekly Friday night wine group, was a bit dark - sign of premature aging for its vintage (2011)- with a tropical fruit nose and entry, followed by a sweet mid palate and a stemmy, off-balance finish. It was a screw cap bottle, typical of some U.S. and many Australian/New Zealand wines, atypical of France. My only comment[...]

When it comes to Italy and wine, most think of the two famous Northern appellations of Tuscany, with its Sangiovese grape, and Piedmont, with its various versions of Nebiollo, and maybe Pinot Grigio.In fact all regions of Italy produce different wines and have their own unique profiles. Today I will focus on the Southernmost part of Italy for an overview, more details to come in future blogs.First a brief geography lesson. On the map Italy looks like a boot kicking a ball. That ball is the island of Sicily (orange in the map above). The foot kicking the ball has[...]