It’s that time of month again, when we get all wrapped-up in the wrap-ups. This month over at Wine.Answers.com, I dealt in the rare (and long-overdue), the weird (two kinds, actually), and the wonderful:
- First, the Rare: A focus on what makes the magical wines of Portugal’s Madeira so damn… magical, as told through the penmanship assistance of stalwart Madeira producer Blandy’s Chris Blandy.
I’ve long been a Madeira fan, though I seem to be in somewhat shrinking company these days in the U.S., which feels totally weird to me, but then I am a strange guy. But maybe not as strange as what makes up The Weird this month…
- The Weird comes by way of the catastrophic geographical history of Washington State, which I learned while touring the area during my sojourn to Taste Washington 2014. Seriously, it’s like we’re living between intense, cataclysmic events and are just lucky they can make good damn fine wine there in the meantime.
- The Weird also comes to us by way of reviewing a sample of what I found to be rather odd wine accessory, CulVino’s Air Carafe. I just didn’t quite “get” this one, though I could appreciate where some (primarily those dealing with a lot of fruit flies buzzing around) might find it useful. I’m quite happy to be convinced of the Air Carafe’s usefulness, but I struggled to find a reason to pick one up unless you spend a lot of time drinking vino outside.
- Finally, we have the Wonderful, which is how I’d describe fellow Philly wine personality Marnie Old’s latest book (I received a review copy), Wine: A Tasting Course. Despite some of its pages being potentially overwhelming for the newest-of-wine-newbies, I loved what Marnie did with this book; she effectively reversed the normal wine appreciation approach of facts-to-techniques, instead encouraging the building skills first. Coupled with a presentation that might best be described as info-graphics-on-steroids, and you’ve got a winner of an intro wine book for visual learners (for more on Marnie, check out a vid interview we did… er, not so recently ago).
Cheers!