by admin | May 21, 2025 | Blog
My previous post from April 23rd was the first of two about a recent trip to Austria. In it, I focused on Grüner Veltliner and favorite wines tasted during the trip. In this second and concluding installment, the focus shifts to Riesling. Stephen Brooks’ The Wines of...
by admin | May 7, 2025 | Blog
The other night with dinner we enjoyed the first bottle out of my cellar in over seven years. Allow me to explain—and full disclosure here. When we moved from San Francisco back to New Mexico in August of 2017, two things didn’t make the trip: over a thousand LPs and...
by admin | Apr 23, 2025 | Blog
I remember when I first got into wine eons ago. I had just moved to San Francisco, so was only an hour and change from Napa and Sonoma. No surprise that I initially cut my teeth on California wine, which didn’t involve learning any classifications or Byzantine wine...
by admin | Apr 8, 2025 | Blog
I’m not a big gin drinker. But my wife Carla likes the occasional Martini. I made one for her the other night using Plymouth 80-proof. Plymouth is also my go-to gin for Negronis with Carpano Antica the vermouth of choice and the required Campari. Negroni aside,...
by admin | Mar 26, 2025 | Blog
In the last post I detailed my internal strategies for smelling a glass of wine. As I mentioned, I think smell is by far the most important aspect of tasting. So I do most of the work assessing a wine on the nose. By the time I taste a wine, I’m only doing two things:...
by admin | Mar 12, 2025 | Blog
In the last post I explained my internal strategies for looking at a glass of wine in the context of using the deductive tasting grid. At one point I mentioned I thought that the nose of a wine—or smell—was by far the most important aspect of tasting. If anything,...
