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…
Category: on the road
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 –…
That *Other* Perrier (Joseph Perrier Champagne Recent Releases)
Jean-Claude Fourmon – president of the fourth-generation family-owned Joseph Perrier in Châlons-en-Champagne – doesn’t seem at all deterred by the fact that, in the U.S., his brand is probably best known as “that other Perrier” that not-as-many people have tasted. He’s quick with amusing witticisms, bordering on platitudes if not for his fantastic delivery; things…