The latest episode of my Hungarian Furmint Adventures is ready to temporarily distract you from holiday shopping, and make you thirsty. In this episode, I’m joined by Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant’s Peter Granoff, who makes a comical appearance and adds a bit of spot-on, Master-Somm-infused tasting commentary on the Furmint wines of Szent Donát Winery….
Category: on the road
Mama Don’t Take No Mess (Livermore Valley, Reconsidered at Palate Press)
One of my media tours this year had me returning to California’s perennially underrated Livermore Valley, where I’d not been for a few years, and reconnecting with the likes of local vintners Karl Wente and Steve Mirassou, neither of whom I’d seen (or, more importantly, tasted with) lately. The tour was very well executed, with…
The Ugly Truth, The Pretty Bubbles (Mailly Champagne Recent Releases)
The ugly truth is that I – quite lazily – did not really want to write about Champagne cooperative Mailly (which takes its moniker, and the fruit from its Grand Cru vineyards, from the town of the same name). In fact, I felt so lazy about it, that I employed the writer’s laziest device (the…
“Living Patrimony” (Bollinger Champagne Recent Releases)
In theory, it ought to be easy to hate on the Champagne house Bollinger. They’re big (producing about 3 million bottles annually); they’re kitschy-famous (getting the royal warrant from the UK market in 1884, and then becoming the official Champers of agent 007); they’re fairly corporate (a staggering – and, one imagines, barely manageable –…