Closing in on the ninth decade, the beret and the smile are still unmistakable. Miljenko “Mike” Grgich, now a California winemaking legend, turns 90 this year. For those who aren’t familiar with the tale, Mike’s life story could make fitting fodder for a TV wine drama: one of eleven kids; stomped his first grapes at…
Category: crowd pleaser wines
Of Griffins, Protoceratops And Sonoma Syrah (Qualia’s Pavo 2009)
While I cannot verify it via personal experience, I strongly suspect that apart from mining, graphic novels, porn (or maybe graphic novels about porn), the wine business is the only other industry in which you can start a story with the phrase “so I once met this guy in a cave…” without raising eyebrows in…
Hourglass Recent Releases (Or, “Reports Of Napa’s Vintage From Hell Might Be Overblown”)
I, along with a small cadre of other wine media peeps, recently got invited to one of those on-line Q&A / sample tasting thangs highlighting recent releases from high-end Napa Valley producer Hourglass (so named due to the shape of their vineyard holdings, which form part of the narrowest spots in the North-South winegrowing continuum…
Churchill’s Vintage Port Recent (And Not So Recent) Releases
“You can beat the sh*t out of something, and all you get is powdered sh*t!” – Johnny Graham As part of some prep work for recently-published Playboy Port Primer (For Your Holiday Port-ing Pleasure), in November I was a guest of importer Frederick Wildman for a lunch/tasting and dinner/tasting with Johnny Graham, the force behind…