By Evan Dawson, Finger Lakes Correspondent Alder Yarrow of the Vinography blog wrote a great post about wine in America last week and I wanted to build on what he very effectively wrote. First, while it might take years of effort, the most effective way to erode the stigma of pretension that wine endures is to get it on the dinner table in more families, more often. One big step would be to lower the legal drinking age to 18. How is this related? This country has strange obsessions with morality, even though most efforts tend to have the opposite of the desired…
Posts Written ByEvan Dawson
Natural vs. Synthetic Corks: A Mystery Solved and an Ongoing Debate
By Evan Dawson, Finger Lakes CorrespondentPhoto by Morgan Dawson I nearly sprinted down to my basement — ahem, cellar — when Lenn made a bit of a shocking announcement last week: His 2007 Ravines Argetsinger Riesling was closed with a synthetic cork. This is a very highly regarded wine (Lenn included it in his 2008 wines of the year) and it seems destined to improve with time. Wine Spectator gave it 89 points and advised readers to "drink now through 2009;" I found that assessment to be wholly misguided and actually wrote, in silver marker, the words "drink after 2020"…
When Common Sense and NY State Politics Collide: The Wine Bag Issue
By Evan Dawson, Finger Lakes Correspondent I do not intend to make a cabernet out of a concord here, but this is ridiculous. And it's a microcosm of the dysfunction that has rotted this state for years. The owner of one of western New York's largest wine and liquor stores may be fined $10,000 by the New York State Liquor Authority because he had the audacity to sell wine gift bags to his customers who were buying, you know, wine. Here's the short version: The law is written to enumerate the various things that a wine or liquor store is…
How Tierce Riesling Gets Made: Inside the Winemaker’s Lab
Winemaker Johannes Reinhardt at the Tierce blending session By Evan Dawson, Finger Lakes CorrespondentAll photos by Morgan Dawson "These are the most precocious aromatics I've ever seen at this point in a wine's development," Peter Bell said, surveying more than 40 glasses containing Riesling blends from the 2008 vintage. "I mean, it's December. This is remarkable. Wine does what it wants to do, and the aromatics could drop a cliff. But I doubt it. This is just remarkable." This is not propaganda. Some winemakers play up the virtues of each vintage. They have to answer to accountants, after all.…