Category Archives: EMPTIED BOTTLES

Here reside my bottle breakdowns. These reviews provide information about each wine’s context: history, geography, value, etc., and composition: from appearance and aromas, to sweetness, acidity, tannin, body, length, flavors and quality within its type. Each review features a chart where I rank the wine’s qualities (e.g. light, medium, or full bodied) according to the Wine and Spirit Education Trust’s tasting guide. These are snapshots of a wine and reviewer. Don’t be surprised if the wine and your perception of it change. Use this data to buy and taste wine with purpose.

Stop worrying if a wine is bad or good. Judgment only describes the judge. Instead, treat each wine, each bottle, even each sip as a meeting unique unto itself. Find new wines here to stretch your mind and palate.

Open bottle. Open mind.

Wine Review: Philippe Colin, Premier Cru, Chassagne-Montrachet, France “Les Chenevottes” 2012

Posted on October 5, 2020 by waywardwine

Philippe Colin is a terroir-ist. He produces up to 25 wines a year, mostly drawn from 13 hectares (32 acres) of single plots in Chassagne-Montrachet: Burgundy’s central heart of golden, powerful Chardonnay (and some Pinot Noir). He would make more if possible. Colin has shifted from traditional 228 litres to 450 and 500 litres oak barrels, 20 to 25% of which are new, to not overwhelm the fruit with wood. Continue reading →

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Wine Review: Domaine Tollot-Beaut Chorey-Les-Beaune Rouge 2011

Posted on May 4, 2020 by waywardwine

Now trapped at home, my cellar (aka crawl space) lights up the end of this dark tunnel. Each bottle holds a glimpse into the world before this plodding, boring present. I would rather open wines too early than too late for the sake of some palate time travel. So, yes, let us crack open another Burgundy. Continue reading →

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Balkan Merlot Wine Review: VukojE, Galerija, Bosnia-Herzegovina 2016

Posted on April 29, 2019 by waywardwine

Wow. Hi internet, I missed you. Toddler distractions notwithstanding, let us turn our sails back toward the wine dark sea. Many leagues ago, I started to review Balkan wines my mother-in-law smuggled back with her. The tannic, native grape, Vranak made for some puckered and challenged palates (read here). But, how does Bosnia-Herzegovina handle the stereotyped grape of plush pleasure and ease: Merlot? Continue reading →

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Rock’In Bottle

Posted on February 2, 2019 by waywardwine

Want more minerality in your wine? Somehow this bottle of bright, chalky, organic white Burgundy also trapped a piece of gravel in its glass base: It looks like the wine should be fine…we’ll see.

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Don’t Balk at Balkan Wine: Montenegro Wine Review Plantaze’s Vranac Pro Corde 2013

Posted on January 7, 2019 by waywardwine

Be good to your mother-in-law. You never know when she might share wines smuggled from the Balkans. After our New Year’s Eve Serbian bubbly (read here), today we try a serious red wine from Montenegro: a country sandwiched between the Adriatic Coast, inland Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia to its North, Albania and Kosovo to its South.

This wine’s producer, Plantaze, today makes 40 different wines, from 26 grape varieties, and four brandies totaling 17 million bottles. They are Montenegro’s biggest deal, wine-wise, but started humbly with a 1963 agricultural merger that planted an “infertile wasteland” (their words) of rocks and shallow soil around Skadar Lake: Continue reading →

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