Every Monday, discover new wines, regions, and ways to understand this fermenting sea.
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Munching Vidal Blanc on Keuka Lake, New York
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Category Archives: Red
Don’t Balk at Balkan Wine: Montenegro Wine Review Plantaze’s Vranac Pro Corde 2013
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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Posted in Red, Vranac
Tagged 2013, Balkans, Montenegro, Plantaze, Pro Corde, Red wine, travel, Vranac, Vranac grapes, wine
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Canadian Pinot Noir Eh!? Alderlea v Quill v DeVine Vancouver Island BC
By choice or by fate, I cannot escape Pinot Noir. I was born in Oregon and returned to its wine industry. Our traipse through the extreme wines of Vancouver Island have gone from bad to worse to decent, usually faltering with noble grapes like Chardonnay (here), Gamay (here), but succeeding with weird hybrids like Savignette (read here). Can this warm pocket in the Northernmost fringes of winemaker pull off the queen of grapes: Pinot Noir? Continue reading
Posted in Pinot Noir, Uncategorized
Tagged Burgundy, Canada, Canadian wine, drink, Oregon, pinot noir, travel, Vancouver, Vancouver Island, wine
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Thirsty Thursday: Domaine Terlato and Chapoutier Shiraz Viognier Victoria Australia 2012
This Thirsty Thursday lights on a strange affair riven between three countries. The wine is from Domaine Terlato and Chapoutier. Neither name sounds very Australian. This is because Napa bound Tony Terlato began importing Michel Chapoutier’s wines from the Cotes … Continue reading
Posted in Red, Syrah, Uncategorized
Tagged Australia, chapoutier, cote Rotiecote, Michel chapoutier, Shiraz, Terlato, Victoria, Viognier, wine
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Jack Creek Cellars, Estate, Pinot Noir Reserve, Central Coast, California, 2006
Let’s break from our EU Austerity Drinking Tour for something more to home. This Thanksgiving our family took a turkey break and visited Pinot Noir country in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Stops at Archery Summit, Angela, Lange, and Troon all highlighted the many forms and clones that Oregon Pinot could take on. Continue reading
Posted in Pinot Noir, Uncategorized
Tagged 2006, and Troon, Angela, Archery Summit, California, Central Coast, Estate, Jack Creek Cellars, Lange, Oregon, pinot noir, Pinot Noir Reserve, Willamette Valley, yamhill carlton
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Thirsty Thursday: Nero d’Avola, COS, Nero di Lupo, Sicilia IGT 2011
For Christmas we suggested a wild Sicilian red aged in pithoi (read here). This Thirsty Thursday, we revisit Azienda Agricola COS in Southeastern Sicily (because we can’t help ourselves).
Again, the grape is Nero d’Avola. Again, wild yeasts did the work, biodynamic principles reigned supreme, and nothing beyond a dash of sulfur was added to the wine.
Yet this time, instead of those gloriously anochronistic pithoi (ceramic jugs), modernism creeps in with two years of cellaring in cement tanks under temp control.
The result? Continue reading
Posted in Nero D'Avola, Red
Tagged Azienda Agricola COS, COS, Italian wine, italy, Nero D'Avola, Nero di Lupo, Sicily, wine
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