A little rain

OK. It’s been a lot. It started on Friday and now on Monday morning, it’s still damp and grey. It’s not good for the grapes, but it’s not disastrous. Most vineyards already had a good amount of their whites in and reds (except for some pinot noir) usually does not get picked until mid October.
The [...]

Bodegas Fernando Remirez de Ganuza

I went to a Spanish wine tasting at Fiamma in New York on Monday and had a chance to taste some rare and some good wines.
The ones I liked the best were from Remirez de Ganuza in Rioja. I had not tasted them before and what I liked about them was the light to medium [...]

Wine on the web

Representatives for Amazon.com are making a presentation to the Long Island Wine Council today.
Wine sales on the internet behomoth are scary for retail stores. More scary than Costco selling wine?
Here’s a story. Some customers at the restaurant especially like the Cinquante-Cinq Sauvignon Blanc from the South of France that we poured by the glass for [...]

Is wine selling? Or not?

Here’s a good example of two ways to interpret the same information.  Two California newspapers, reporting on surveys of wine executives and wine professionals, came up with competing headlines.
From the Sacremento Bee: California Wine Sales Appear Healthy.

From the Press Democrat: Softening Wine Market.
And now from the people who conducted and released the surveys:
Wine Industry Intent [...]

More 90s for Long Island

David Schildknecht of the Wine Advocate reviewed some New York wines for the August issue of the newsletter and two Long Island wines receieved 90 points on their 100-point scale: the 2007 Channing Daughters Tocai Friulano and the 2005 Paumanok Cabernet Franc.
Channing’s 2007 Sauvignon Blanc received an 89, as did the Grapes of Roth 2007 [...]

The latest in scarecrows

It’s been so beautiful for the past few days, and already wineries are picking. I hear some are picking pinot noir for sparkling and at Lieb Cellars vineyards up on Oregon Road on Cutchouge the nets have been lifted and the white grapes are going, going.
At the end of the rows were some interesting scarecrows. [...]

Sunny does Champagne

I had the good fortune to run into Sunny Gandara at the Master of Wine Champagne tasting on Monday. Sunny also finished her diploma the same time I did and, unlike me, submitted her application to be accepted to the MW program for the coming year. She said she will hear by the end of [...]

Adelsheim and Dijon clones

At Winebow’s tasting on Tuesday I got to talk to David Adelsheim of Adelsheim Winery in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. I tasting four of his wines and liked them a lot. The whites, which all had screw caps, were the 2006 Pinot Blanc, the 2006 “CH” , and unoaked chardonnay, and the 2007 Pinot [...]

Didier Dagueneau dies

From the Decanter article:
Didier Dagueneau dies
September 18, 2008
Oliver StylesDidier Dagueneau, one of the greatest Sauvignon Blanc producers in the world, has died in a flying accident at the age of 52.
Dubbed ‘one of the greatest winemakers of our generation’ by renowned consultant Denis Dubourdieu, Dagueneau was known worldwide as an outspoken and brilliant winemaker.
Unlike [...]

A tour of Greece

This week’s Winebow tasting in New York was pretty good. There was plenty of space between the tables, it was well lighted and the tables and the page numbers were coordinated in the book. This may seem like a minor detail, but it’s so much easier when you don’t have to keep flipping through the [...]