“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…
Category: elegant wines
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…
Winemaking, Sashimi Style (Melville Estate Recent Releases)
“We don’t make wine. We grow wine. We’re more like ‘sashimi style’ winemaking.” On a cool morning that will later turn into a blustering day in the midst of a small August heat wave, Chad Melville seemed to be feeding me what ought to be a standard marketing line about winemaking. The kind that end…
Out From Napa’s Shadow (High End Wines Shine At Taste Of Sonoma 2012)
Message to Sonoma: you’re no longer in your neighbor Napa Valley’s shadow. You’re not the uncool kid at the dance, the next-to-last picked for the two-hand-touch football game during recess, or the slightly-less-talented and almost-as-comely sister when compared to Napa, at least not on the high-end of the vinous spectrum. That bit of news flash…