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Catalunya Watch
I won’t be presumptuous and start treating Catalan wines as if they are from a separate country; not yet anyway. But, Catalunya is on fire and I’m not including Priorat in the mix which I often find...
View ArticleThe Old and The Restless: Vintage Champagne Tasting, December 8, 2014
More than still wine, older sparkling wine is subject to individual taste. Oxidation is way more accepted. Some people enjoy Champagne that is very yeasty; others don’t. Most vintage Champagne spends...
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Champagne for NYE or Whenever the Mood Strikes
There is a lot of mediocre Champagne on the market but luckily, there is also a bunch of absolutely delicious juice, mostly made by growers. To wax and wane about all I’ve tried over the last year that...
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Champagne Chartogne-Taillet
Chartogne-Taillet is deserving of its own post. Even before Alexandre Chartogne joined his parents in 2006, this was one of the hottest growers in the hood. Since he took over the winemaking, it has...
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Green Acres We Are There: Long Island Wines are Growing Up
Let’s face it, Long Island is probably best known for its iced tea, which is not iced tea at all but a nauseating potion of five different liquors that is sure to get you hammered in ten seconds flat....
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The Old and The Restless: White Burgundy
Have you ever wondered if ancient aliens, who some believe held the key to the mysteries of the universe, planted specific grapes in certain areas? No? Me neither but no doubt, Riesling marked its...
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Dario Princic and the Orange Revolution
Last month I brought an orange wine to a dinner with a few friends, including a couple with two young kids. Anyone who has children knows that they don’t leave a ton of time for much else, so one of...
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Selling to Chains
Anyone who knows me knows this much: I never get to the airport early but last week I was pretty anxious to get out of town, so I found myself at SFO (San Francisco Int’l Airport) with an hour and a...
View ArticleIn Conversation with Julia Weinberg, Delectable/Mossik Cellars
Monday, June 1, 6:30 – 8 pm @ Ruby Wine 1419 18th Street, SF Nearly all of my wine friends – industry or not – use Delectable. Not only does it have a massive database but also, users can share their...
View ArticleWine Lexicon Additions
Every year the Oxford Dictionary, as well as similar loquacious tomes, adds new words to the English language. Some of the most recent ones include “vape,[1]“amazeballs [2]” and a personal favorite,...
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Eye Candy
I used to be suspicious of wine labels that were basically not much more than eye candy. And, anytime I’d hear people say that they purchased wine because they liked the label I could feel my eyes...
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Hearth Coffee Roasters: The Castro’s Best Wine Bar
One of my besties, who shall go by the name of “Uncle Nanco,” has been vigilantly watching the proliferation of coffee “places”* throughout the Castro. We thought that perhaps we should try them all on...
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Could the Finger Lakes be the New World Loire?
Here me out, I will certainly get to this question. But first, mea culpa. It’s rather pathetic that with as often as I am in New York I visited the Finger Lakes for the first time a couple of weeks...
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Want to Learn About Wine?
Everyone’s brain is different so to think that using the same approach to learning about wine is going to work for everyone is just wrong. This doesn’t mean that the various manifestos on how to taste...
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Califermentation…A Celebration of Inspiration
Winelandia and The Vinguard are joining forces and holding Califermentation, a landmark tasting at Terroir Natural Wine Bar and Merchant shining the solar spotlight on up and coming, and under the...
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The Godfather: Tony Coturri
Tony Coturri I’m going to plagiarize myself and borrow the first paragraph from CalifermentationSF.com. “A natural wine love story. Way back in 1979, when disco reigned, someone was about to shoot JR...
View ArticleThe Old and the Restless: Cabernet Franc
I thought I published this but alas, no. At any rate, it is a good companion piece to “1990.” So, check it out. And, this is making me want to have a follow up tasting…so if you are interested in...
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25 years in 25 wines: 1990
Memories from the Bottle 1990 I lived in London and Israel throughout most of 1990 but upon my return, just before Halloween (I remember this vividly as my sister and father were dressing up as Olive...
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The Vinguard’s Top Wines of 2015
These are the first ten wines that came to me when I was thinking about the most impressive wines I’ve had all year. I ordered them by price but appreciated all equally, though for different reasons....
View ArticleSexism in the Wine Industry
I used to have a litmus test for the women I dated. They needed to know who Che Guevera was. I relaxed that over time but am thinking about instating a new test for anyone I plan on associating with,...
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