Friday Wine Sips: Five Sippable Whites from 2011
Pleasant doings on this unusually timely, not to say early, edition of Friday Wine Sips; no clunkers, no plonk, just refreshment and ease and relaxation, though these wines aren’t meant just for sipping out on the porch or patio, sweet as that activity would be; they’re also meant to be thoughtfully and sympathetically (but not...
Bio-Dynamic in Burgundy, Part II: Domaine Emmanuel Giboulet
Sometimes we can learn a lot about wine from small producers who keep ambition, not to mention grandiose schemes, in check and focus on doing an excellent job on a small but impeccable scale. Such a producer is Domaine Emmanuel Giboulot, from whose 10 hectares of vines — a bit more than 25 acres —...
Friday Wine Sips: Eight Rosés
I love rosés. There, I said it and I’m not sorry. Once the temperature goes above 70, I’m ready to be charmed and delighted by these pale, dry, stony evocations of sun and wind and dusty herb gardens and hot stones and bowls of dried or fresh and spiced fruit. Today we look at a...
America Will Never Have a Genuine Wine Culture
Perhaps Americans who care about wine romanticize the notion of a European wine culture. You know what I mean, the image we carry around in our imaginations that depicts a long table set outside under ancient olive trees — this would be in Provence, of course, or Tuscany — with three or four generations of...
Friday Wine Sips: Some Italians
I know, you’re thinking, “F.K., why don’t you just call this weekly series Saturday Wine Sips, since you seem to have so much trouble getting the thing written and posted on Friday?” Well, because Friday is the lead-in to the weekend, and I think of this series as brief reviews of wines My Readers would...
Old-School California Cabernet XX: Pine Ridge Napa Valley 2009
Gary Andrus and a group of investors founded Pine Ridge Vineyards in 1978. (Remember, this “Old-School California Cabernet” series is devoted to wineries established in 1980 or before.) Now the company owns about 200 acres in some of Napa Valley’s prime vineyard areas: Stags Leap District, Rutherford, Oakville District, Carneros and Howell Mountain. Pine Ridge’s...
Bio-Dynamic in Burgundy, Part I: Domaine Michel Lafarge
Domaine Michel Lafarge is one of the great producers of the wines of Burgundy’s Volnay appellation. The domaine is small, owning just under 25 acres of vines, and producing only about 4,000 cases annually, but the wines are models of their genres. The family has been cultivating grapes in Volnay since the early 19th Century...
Friday Wine Sips: Way South of the Border
Malbec. Carmenere. Cabernet Sauvignon. We must be talking about Chile and Argentina. These wines are priced from about $11 to about $20, and some of them around $12 to $14 represent Excellent Value. I was more impressed with the carmenère wines than the malbecs or cabernets; I assume that conclusion is just the luck of...
Damn, This Was Good! #15
Casting around for a wine to sip with Vinegar-Braised Chicken with Leeks and Peas, I opened, with a deft twist of the wrist, the Dr. Pauly Bergweiler Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spätlese 2009, Mosel, and it turned out to be a great match with the dish. (The first time I made this, we drank the Tablas...
The Wines of Stéphane Tissot
The Jura Mountains, in east-central France, between Burgundy and Switzerland, remain an exotic and remote region for most winelovers, even those who may know a considerable amount about French wine. Landscape, grape varieties and methods in the Jura and Arbois appellations are unique, and so are the wines, which tend toward delicacy and elegance. While...
Pizza and BBQ Ribs and Wine
Pizza and barbecue ribs don’t have much in common; the first is a form of savory flatbread, while the second is pure meat and bones; the first cooks quickly, the second luxuriates in long, slow heat. Of course pizza often has some form of meat as a topping (certainly the case at my house; I...
Damn, This Was Good! (#14)
I wanted a deftly handled chardonnay to drink with LL’s roasted sea bass and pancetta with braised leeks, sweet potatoes and black garlic, so I plucked a bottle of Trefethen Estate Chardonnay 2010, Oak Knoll District of Napa Valley, from the fridge, and it delivered all the purity and intensity that I was looking for....
