There was so much that I didn’t want to like about Sonoma’s storied Williams Selyem. The too-cool-for-school exclusivity of their mailing list. The imposing fortress-like facade of their “barrel-evoking” tasting room and its “wall of bottles.” The fact that they used terms like “barrel-evoking.” That current owners John and Kathe Dyson were former mailing list…
Category: sexy wines
And You Were Expecting What, Exactly? (Lugana Highlights From L’Anteprima Lazise 2016)
Back in March (yeah, yeah, I know…) I attended, as a media guest, the 2016 edition of the well-executed but unfortunately-named L’Anteprima Lazise (seriously… how many of you knew that was a town near Lake Garda in N. Italy?). The event marked the first time that the nearby winemaking regions of Chiaretto, Lugana, and Bardolino…
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 –…