I’m preparing to jump into some extended coverage of California’s Livermore Valley (with which I have a fairly long history at this point), but before that goes down, I though that I’d drop a quick post about tasting some recent samples (via Zoom) with Veneto producer Maculan. You know, because it’s been something like six…
Category: kick-ass wines
Gambling (Literally) on the Spanish DO You’ve Never Heard Of (Probably)
Today, we’re going to talk about a brand that is (quite literally) gambling on a Spanish region that you (probably) know nothing about whatsoever. Back in November of 2024, I was a media guest of Perelada, a somewhat enigmatic producer who is basically the biggest thing going in Spain’s Empordà DO (which is primarily in…
“Making New Wines for the Next Generation” (Getting Reacquainted with Kopke Ports)
Kopke‘s Port Master Blender Carla Tiago is quite resolved to the fact that she may never taste, in their final form, some of the wines she is working on now, because she might be dead by the time that they are fully developed. It’s not that Tiago is old (she’s not). It’s that Kopke’s Ports…
“Like a Memory of the Sea” (Ronchi di Castelluccio Recent Releases)
When describing what makes his family’s wines (and those from Italy’s Romagna in general) unique, Ronchi di Castelluccio‘s Aldo Mario Rametta keeps coming back to one thing: the soil. “The soil is like a memory of the sea,” he says (rather poetically) during an online tasting of some of his family’s recent releases (which also…