IS HE A WINE GUY?
“Expensive wine is a weakness we both share,” he said. He took a sip of Chardonnay from a glass he had nursed through fried calamari. I was quite sure it was domestic but I refrained from asking. “Yes,” I replied. “Nowadays my main go-to wines are Chablis Premier Cru for whites and Chateauneuf du Pape for reds.” I boasted. I was being an ass. He smiled in acknowledgement but I wasn’t sure if he knew what those wines were. I decided to change the subject. We were having a business dinner at an uppity suburban mall, just he and I.[...]
A TALE OF THREE 99S
Last night, by sheer coincidence three bottles of 1999 French wines appeared in our regular Friday night blind tasting. Together they underscored an important point about aging potential that we keep rediscovering: Bordeaux beats them all, even when it is an unimpressive, cheap label. The first bottle was this Burgundy, Chateau Corton Grancy, Grand Cru, a haughty label. It’s a top of the line Pinot Noir, from the mother-lode of Pinot Noirs. Its exalted vineyards, near the famed village of Corton are centuries old. Purchased in 1891 by the renowned negociant Latour family, the property has been producing elegant, expensive wines[...]
CLONES; BEWARE OF THE BUZZ
Watch out for a new word buzzing through the wine world: Clones!I’ve been hearing it in tasting rooms, especially those that sample Pinot Noir, from Santa Barbara to the Russian River. Recently the word struck a sensitive nerve. “They should take their clones and shove them up their ass!” I said, about the wine you see in the photo. We tasted it blind in our Friday night wine group and we all agreed that it was a domestic Syrah. Then someone said, “What about Pinot Noir?” The wine was maroon in color, had a Syrah nose and Syrah flavors. It was[...]
WEATHER AND WINE; LET’S KEEP IT SIMPLE
The complexity of our wine universe forces us to break it into categories to make sense of it all. Varietals and geographic regions are the most common, but hard to master. Another one I find quite useful is easier: climate. There are only two climates worthy of note: warm and cool. Identifying wine profiles from these two climates is fairly easy. It is one of the essential first steps in my assessment of wines I taste blind every Friday night as I attempt to guess what each is. Last week I hit a home run with an Alto[...]
CHATEAU MOUTON ROTHSCHILD AND ITS GRAND IMPRESARIO, BARON PHILLIPE
In our rapidly changing times, one of the amazing wonders in the wine world is the 1855 Classification of Bordeaux that has stood rock solid for over 160 years. Its top tier in particular, the exalted First Growths, has been impenetrable. Except on one occasion in 1973, when Chateau Mouton Rothschild was promoted from Second to First. It could only have happened through the efforts of a true impresario and that, Baron Philippe de Rothschild indeed was. [...]
WEROWOCOMOCO, FRANCIS COPPOLA’S NEW NATIVE AMERICAN RESTAURANT IN SONOMA WINE COUNTRY
Francis Ford Coppola is a patient visionary. In youth he surmounted many obstacles to see projects like Godfather and Apocalypse Now into award winning, classic movies. In older age, transformed into a winemaker, he presided over a seemingly impossible resurrection of the historic Inglenook label. He also had a vision for a Disneyland style wine destination, children included. He gradually converted the former Chateau Souverain estate in Sonoma County, north of Healdsburg, into a flagship complex featuring a winery, tasting rooms, restaurants, a movie museum and a giant swimming pool with cabanas.Fascinated by early American history, his latest long term[...]