Some wines with age! Luneau Papin, Lopez de Heredia and Ducru
Drinking wines with age on them can be rewarding. We’ve had the chance to pop some mature wines recently; here are four with two under $30!
Luneau Papin, L D’or, Muscadet, 1999 About $20
Muscadet is not the first thing you might think of when it comes to mature wine. But from the top producers, it...
Tour and taste at Newport’s mansions!
The Preservation Society of Newport County holds its fourth annual Newport Mansions Wine & Food Festival September 25-27. The two-and-a-half day affair, presented by Food & Wine Magazine, includes a wine auction on Friday night and gala honoring Jacques Pepin, a wine tasting on both Saturday and Sunday featuring over 150 wines, chef cooking demos...
Champagne, French binge, Chicago – sipped and spit
SPIT: Bling champagne
An unnamed source cites declines of 50-85% in champagne sales with pricey stuff hit hardest. The story by Alice Feiring in this weekend’s WSJ. magazine also suggest price wars may be imminent. (Lack of) Money quote comes from Roberta Morrell, a NYC retailer: “The trouble with dropping prices is how will they raise...
Sierra missed, parte dos! A blind tasting of Sierra Carche
Remember the saga of Sierra Carche? Here’s a reminder from our earlier coverage: “What happens when a reviewer tastes a good bottle, but some consumers buy what appears to be a completely different product? Think it couldn’t happen? Guess again and behold the saga of Sierra Carche 2005.”
Well, last week I met that consumer, Robert...
Make your own robotic wine video! [contest]
There have been a couple of videos about the wine business circulating recently. They both have used a site called xtranormal, which allows users to select a scene, type text, chose camera angles and music to make a short video.
If you have been dying to make your own wine “movie,” now is your chance!...
What do to with wine flotsam and jetsam? [reader mail]
Reader Ben writes in:
Floaters in wine.
How do you get them out? A finger? A spoon? Spit out the first sip? You’ve had that experience, haven’t you, of seeing a host of small floating objects on the surface of a glass of wine, usually just bits of cork, but sometimes strange looking pieces of “dust”…...
Cucumber soup: impossible food-wine pairing?!?
One dish that we have been making and enjoying this summer is chilled cucumber soup. We’ve used the recipe from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything (buy on amazon), which calls for stock, sauteed shallots and heavy cream to enliven the cucumbers. We replaced the suggested dill with mint, which works well. (Even though we...
Medallurgy: wine competition gold is as good as chance
About half of the wines entered into at least three wine competitions bring home a gold medal. But of those winning a gold, 84 percent win no further medal at another competition. Thus, “winning gold medals may be more a matter of chance than a predictor of quality.”
Such are the findings from a...
Balancing supply and demand in Champagne
“French wine exports have plunged 25 percent in the first half of this year as consumers worldwide scaled back on non-essentials amid the global financial crisis…Exports of luxury products such as Champagne and Cognac fell 45 percent and 27 percent respectively.” [AP]
“With sales falling, producers may be ordered to leave up to half their grapes...
Piercing robo-dialogue about sales in the wine trade
A reader just sent this satirical video about how distributors selling wine in this slow economy. Caution: it’s wonky, profane, cynical and sometimes hard to understand because of the robotic nature of the voices. But it still has some good laughs and discussion points on a Friday afternoon.
Bargains on restaurant wine lists – NYC edition
When is a wine cheaper in a restaurant than at a store?
With restaurant markups commonly 300 or 400 percent you could be forgiven for answering, “never.” But right now, there’s a restaurant in NYC where the head sommelier is clearing out his inventory. Unfortunately, he’s already blown through most of the wines that cost...
Vent your spleen: synthetic corks!
“Give me screwcaps or give me corks!” Patrick Henry presciently wrote in 1775. Er, maybe that was Jancis Robinson who wrote something like that in 2006.
But you get the idea. That middle ground between true cork and screwcap is occupied by the synthetic cork. On the plus side, there’s no TCA taint, which can...
