Helicopter drying, Penn’s stores, sexy V&E – sipped & spit
SPIT: carbon footprint Forget the mode of transport or the weight of the glass bottles; my co-author neglected this in our calculation of wine’s carbon footprint: grape drying by helicopter in Napa! [NPR] SIPPED: watching grapes grow Viticulture & Enology is one of the sexiest majors at Cornell. Well, with the helicopter blow driers, why...
Pax Mahle’s enormous eggs
When I bumped into Pax Mahle earlier this year at his Sonoma wine making facility, I told him I wanted to see his eggs. Fortunately, he didn’t drop his drawers. Instead, he took me to his fermentation room where he had a massive pair of stone, egg-shaped fermenters! Pax used to make full-throttle wines, syrahs...
Developing: Vineyard for sale? In France, perhaps many
It’s not every day that we get to talk about tax reforms on this site. Especially foreign tax reforms! But a recent change in the tax on capital gains from real property in France may cause several vineyards to sell before February 1 of next year. French tax code previously had a zero percent tax...
Where in the wine world are we?
Site reader Damien sent in this photo from his travels suggesting that we could play our favorite game, “where in the wine world are we?” So, take a gander at the photo to the right and hit the comments with your thoughts as to where the reader was. The first to guess right, wins a...
Weekend wines: open thread and some picks
Sometimes you can seek solace in wine. Our town was shaken by an unthinkable tragedy this week. Right now, all I want from wine is to act as a bit of a balm. So here are a few wines that I brought some joy to my NYU class this week. We opened with the Roederer...
From your playlist to your wine list?
What do Motörhead, AC/DC, Whitesnake, the Rolling Stones, and Dave Matthews have in common? Well, besides never being in the same playlist on one person’s iTunes library, these musicians have all released their own wine labels recently. Sadly, none of them could probably identify the vineyards used for making said wines. (Perhaps Matthews could; he...
Raise funds for Partners in Health at Dressner NYC tastings
Wine importer Joe Dressner lost his three-year battle against brain cancer last month. During the course of his treatment, he often posted on his blog that there were others in the world who could not get the treatment he was getting. The Haitian earthquake of last year sparked him to hold several fundraiser tastings for...
Sea Smoke declares own vineyards “Grand Cru” on the label
New for the 2009 vintage: Sea Smoke of Santa Barbara is putting “California Grand Cru” on the label. The term is pure marketing. Needless to say, there is no codified “cru” system of California. However, the term does not fall afoul of the protected terms negotiated in the EU-US accord on place names. The labels...
A new daily email service!
Do you love the smell of freshly baked blog posts hitting your inbox every morning? Then sign up for my new “daily dose.” I’ve been sending them with the new service for about ten days so if you are a subscriber and you have been feeling a nagging emptiness in your inbox, then something has...
Refreshing Brunello: Il Paradiso
I attended a private dinner recently where a Brunello was the main wine. It was big and extracted and I found it fatiguing. I can’t even remember the producer’s name. Of course, the palate fatigue wasn’t helped that the other wines on the table were a primitivo and an Amarone. It was the sort of...
Scent of a woman — and a wine — through her nail wraps
Has merlot rosé ever inspired anything? Apparently it has: scented nail wraps. The pink appliqués come from Gallo Family Vineyards to support their new merlot rosé in the UK. Rubbing the wraps releases ripe plum, blueberry and hints cranberry, scents allegedly found in the wine itself. Here’s their marketing spokesperson: Nail wraps are the latest...
Aid Olivier Cousin goes global [AOC]
Although we mentioned it last week in a squib, it bears mentioning again: the French authorities have threatened Olivier Cousin, the horse-tilling vigneron that is a mentor for many younger ones, has been threatened with a $50,000 fine and two years in jail. His transgression? Goofing around with names. The biodyanamic farmer of 25 acres...
