This Friday night, I'll be hosting This Twitter Taste Live for the first time, featuring the wines from Humanitas Wines. Owner-winemaker Judd Wallenbrock is someone I've known for years via email and this blog, and I really love what he's doing with this project. He makes small batches of wines (literally in his garage) and donates all of the profits to charity. All. Of. The. Profits. As we head into the holiday season, how can you not love the idea of a winery doing something like that? This Drink Charitably edition of Twitter Taste live is a joint venture between…
Posts Written OnNovember 2008
The “Perfect Thanksgiving Wine” Myth
Thanksgiving wine columns. Editors demand them. Writers write them. Some wayward readers even clamor for them. Me? I hate them. Well, hate is a strong word. Too strong probably. What I do hate is seeing people so stressed out over wine pairing — Thanksgiving or not — that they rely on the words of a stranger just because they are printed on paper. It's not worth worrying about, people. Wine "experts" and sommeliers don't want you to think so, but wine pairing is often much more about avoiding bad pairings than it is finding the singular "perfect" one. Are there…
Croteaux Vineyards 2007 Merlot “314 Clone” Rose
2007 marked Croteaux Vineyards' second vintage making wine from the merlot grown on their 10-acre property. Previously the fruit was sold (and some still is) to Channing Daughters Winery and Scarola Vineyards. Of course, owners Michael and Paula Croteau don't actually make traditional merlot with those grapes. They make rose — 3 different ones from 3 different clonal selections. And, in an industry large enough now to demand niche producers, they are as 'nichey' as they come. They call it "rose on purpose." These three wines were originally a part of my "Week of 3s" but I think each warrants…
Wine Blogging Wednesday #51: The Round Up
I've been remiss in recent months keeping you updated on the goings on with Wine Blogging Wednesday. I've forgotten to post about newly announced themes and I've definitely missed telling you about the 'round up' posts. No more. I am the founder of this little monthly party after all. I should let my readers know about it a bit more, right? So, it is with great pleasure that I let you know that November's host, Joe from 1WineDude has posted the round up. Thanks for hosting, Joe. Keep an eye out for December's announcement… for WBW #52.
Ackerly Pond Vineyards is For Sale
Stumbled upon this today. It appears that Ackerly Pond Vineyards is for sale. When owner Ray Blum passed a way a while back, most people wondered if this was coming. It appears that it has. I know that his family was at least trying to keep things going. I haven't heard anything from them in months, however.
Finger Lakes Wine: Will Old Wines Mean New Respect?
By Melissa Dobson, Finger Lakes News Correspondent In an effort to continue to establish the Finger Lakes wine region as a producer of world-class wine, a first-time older vintage tasting of almost 70 wines produced from 1988-2003 will be held tomorrow, Friday, November 14, 2008 at Red Newt Cellars and Bistro on Seneca Lake. This tasting of a diverse collection of wines from past vintages is an important step for the wineries of the Finger as they travel the road toward carving out a place amongst the top wine regions of the world. Prior to this effort, there was no…
WBW #51: Baked Goods: The Rare Wine Co. Historic Series Madeira, Charleston Sercial Special Reserve
Wine Blogging Wednesday just cannot be stopped. Here we are, more than 4 years after its inception (this IS the 51st edition) and the theme is one of the few that shoved me way out of my comfort zone. Not only was I forced to leave my beloved state of New York, but I also had to try a style of wine that I know very (very very) little about: wines that are intentionally oxidized at warm/hot temperatures. That's why the one and only (thankfully!) Joe Roberts, known in the blogosphere as 1WineDude, our esteemed host, termed the theme "Baked…
C. Donatiello Winery: When New Yorkers Invade Healdsburg
What do you get when you take an experienced wine executive from New York City and drop him into the Russian River Valley with two winemakers who also hail from New York? Apparently you get some delicious and surprisingly elegant chardonnays and pinot noirs that are undoubtedly California, but not what you might expect. Chris Donatiello was that marketing and sales executive for the Charmer Sunbelt group before teaming up with venture capitalist Bill Hambrecht. Together they purchased Belvedere Winery in Healdsburg, CA — a winery that had been making 125,000 cases a year and converted it into C. Donatiello…
Three Hudson Valley Baco Noirs
Last night, as a part of my Week of 3s project, I tasted three different Baco noir wines from three different Hudson Valley wineries. These were actually the first Baco noirs I had ever tasted and after the tasting I'm still not sure that I quite know what to expect from the hybrid variety. They were all quite different. So what is Baco noir exactly? It's a cross of Folle Blanche (a French vinifera wine grape) and an unknown American grape from the Vitis riparia family. It first created by French wine hybridizer Maurice Baco, so that's where the name comes…
The 2008 Riesling Shoot-Out
By Jason Feulner, Finger Lakes Correspondent Events sometimes receive an exclamatory billing only to draw attention to an antithetical subtext. The title of the "Riesling Shoot-Out," the brainchild of John Zuccarino of Silver Springs Winery and wine author Thomas Pellechia, evokes a line-in-the-sand Wild West gun fight between Finger Lakes and German rieslings, with only the biggest and baddest wines left standing to proclaim victory. Of course, the results were far more mixed, and therein lies the point. The big critics and the publications they work for consider Germany the home of riesling and treat her wines well, giving many a score above the coveted 90-point mark. As this…