It’s with great, great pleasure that I report this quick hit update, letting you know that I will be one of the judges at the 2022 Colorado Governor’s Cup wine competition in Denver, held August 19-21! This one is exciting for several reasons. First, the organizers of this event have been trying to make me…
Category: on the road
Alentejo Sizzles and the Wine Biz Fizzles (Recent NVWA Articles)
Just a quick hit today to tell you about my most recent articles for the Napa Valley Wine Academy. The latest is my final report from my Alentejo media jaunt, focusing on a handful of the region’s producers who are turning Alentejo’s reputation as a hot area pumping out ripe, enormous wines a bit on…
Alentejo Postcard, Part 5 (“Lost Art” – José de Sousa Recent Releases)
Making wine at J.M. da Fonseca’s José de Sousa in Portugal seems, from what I can discern, like a huge pain the ass. First, they’re fans of lagare foot-treading their grapes, an effort that is full of, well, effort. Next, when they do use basket presses, they’re covered in a specially approved blue paint that…
Alentejo Postcard, Part 4 (or “The Cake Doesn’t Need Icing” – Tasting Cortes de Cima)
When you visit Alentejo’s Cortes de Cima (as I did late in 2019 on a media jaunt), you realize that their geese are more than just “a loud alarm system” (as Winemaking Director Hamilton Reis put it). Those geese also eat vineyard pests, like slugs and snails. That’s not the only traditional thing that Cortes…