Week of June 25th – July 1st
Some detailed information on the Domaine Ponsot Clos Saint-Denis that was the begining of the end for Rudy Kurniawan.
Not resting on its laurels as Australia’s best-known winery, Penfold‘s creates the world’s most expensive [and funky looking] bottle of wine. Chris Kassel takes offense.
For all their perceived sophistication, wine geeks are swayed by fancy labels, just like the rest of us.
With the growing populist movement demonizing of all things successful, Tim Fish explores the meaning of a “wine snob”.
Taking well-deserved action, the French classify pre-Phylloxera vines as a “National Treasure“. I am surprised it took them this long.
Lettie Teague, the Wall Street Journal‘s wine writer, has a great profile on mega wine importer, Kermit Lynch.
Period of June 11th – June 24th
Focusing on the (in)famous “Two-Buck Chuck“, W. Blake Gray ponders whether cheap wine is good for the wine industry?
With his usual perceptive insight, Steve Heimoff discusses some of the many problems with wine competitions and why you should disregard those shiny medal stickers wineries love to place on their bottles. The late Daniel Rogov didn’t think much about them either.
In an interesting take on the Judgement of Paris, New Jersey wines fare pretty well against their Gallic peers.
After not being heard from for months, Mike Steinberger (aka the Wine Diarist) pens a terrific and in-depth article for Vanity Fair on the Rudy Kurniawan saga. More details on the saga come from Doug Barzelay, a true insider who had been around Rudy for years.
Alice Feiring pens a great article on how, in a similar path to many Israeli wineries, California Wineries are dialing back the jamminess and upping the ante for elegance. Eater.com‘s wine editor, Talia Baiocchi takes the it a step further and discusses additional stylistic changes occurring in the California wine industry.
With his usual incredible prose, Andrew Jefford discusses Burgundy and reveals that wine is really nothing more than plant feces.
While this website doesn’t contain any advertising, most wine blogs do. Fermentation‘s Tom Wark explores why advertisers don’t take bloggers seriously. The Wild Walla Walla Wine Woman also muses on the current status of wine bloggers.
Week of June 4th – June 10th
Jameson Fink sits down to chat with Georg Riedel about wine, history and of course wine glasses.
A short perusal through the Google results for “Organic Wine” and “Biodynamic Wine” will suffice to alert you to the complexities behind these terms and the varied philosophical differences on both ends of the spectrum. I am working on a newsletter covering these topics, but in the interim check our CellerDoor2Door‘s blog post loosely & succinctly explaining the two terms.
While much has been said about ridiculous tasting notes and the difficulty in writing good ones, John Elliot Trinidad of the SF Wine Blog discusses about finding the right words for the wine’s intangible characteristics.
The irreverent Through the Bunghole blog, puts tasting wine in a different light and describes “How to smell wine“.
Blending wine writing, art, poetry and photography, the delightful Alder Yarrow of Vinography pens the creative “Essence of Wine” series. Read Alder’s introduction to the series, and then check out each one.
Week of May 28th – June 3rd
In an effort to combat the recent [and not so recent] rampart wine counterfeiting plaguing [mostly] French wine, Chateau Lafite Rothschild announces that, starting with the 2009 vintage, all bottles will be proof tagged (a special capsule seal with a 13-numbered code used to authenticate individual bottles).
The Pour Fool takes [us &] French wine to task, hypothesizing that [these days] it’s a lot of hype and there isn’t really anything all that special about French wine. While controversial, it’s certainly true with respect to kosher French wine.
Entaste posts some pictures of truly awesome wine cellars (check out this Pinterest page of more awe-inspiring cellars). Serious eye candy for any wine lover & a great bucket list (for more great pictures, check out the book of beautiful wine cellars from around the world).
One of my favorite wine bloggers, 1 Wine Dude, illustrates how important marketing and branding is and that without a unique message, you are in trouble.
Meg Maker pens an in-depth article about the nuances of tasting and her method for teaching to newbie tasters. Worth reading for anyone interested in learning more about tasting wine – regardless of current abilities.