Posts Written OnNovember 11, 2008

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…