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…
Category: crowd pleaser wines
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…
The Mysterious Madeira, The Submerged Cork, And The Rediscovery Of Christmas Magic
I’d love to kick this post off by somehow linking Madeira to the holidays, but that would be disingenuous of me; the truth is that I love the fortified Portuguese (mostly) dessert wine, and drink it pretty much any chance I get to wrap my grubby little hands around a bottle of the stuff. For…
Sex? Or Death? Oh, And Rare Monbazillac (Chateau Bonnet Recent Releases)
In high school, I had a math teacher who used to tease us when we were timid in class about providing an answer that should have been obvious. He would hold out his lanky arms in the fashion of scales, feigning the weighing of agonizing choices, while muttering, “Sex? Or… death? Sex… or death? I…