California sparkling wine has come a long way (baby) since German draft-dodger and later NYC barber Jacob Schram decided that the hot and sunny knolls of Calistoga in the 1860s looked like a suitable place to plant vines like those he’d left behind in his beloved Rhineland (after all, he’d seen hills far steeper –…
Category: kick-ass wines
The Southern Hemisphere’s Best Chardonnay? (Tasting Leeuwin Art Series 2005)
I know what a lot of you geeky-geeks (I use that as a term of endearment, by the way!) are already thinking after reading the title: Dude, WTF?!? What about Yarra Yering? Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Here’s the thing about Yarra Yering for me: that Chardonnay is the Moriarity to my Holmes; while…
Wined Down: Gulping With A Mastodon For Playboy.com
In what’s become a surreal state of affairs, the list of California cult wines that I’ve yet to try in some way/shape/form is dwindling. Quickly. The surreal part is that there is no way that I could afford these wines on my own, and in some cases I wouldn’t want to pay the money for…
The Other Side Of Oz (Beechworth’s Small Producers And The Heart Of Bareknuckled Australian Winemaking)
It’s a brilliantly sunny day in Beechworth, a rural (even by Aussie wine region standards) area in eastern Victoria that sits just south of Rutherglen. The region was made famous by Giaconda, whose premium Chardonnays are in such high demand that they’re now offered en primeur. But I’m not here to see Giaconda (okay, that…