Geographic isolation engenders resourcefulness. As well as entire rooms that smell like caramel and sultanas. Let’s start with the resourcefulness. When Scottish friends George Sutherland Smith and John Banks decided in the 1860s that they couldn’t wait for materials to be shipped in to them to build All Saints, a winemaking property on the bank…
Category: sexy wines
Bubbly At 150 (Schramsberg Recent Releases, And Why It’s Okay That California Is Not Champagne)
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 –…
What’s In A Name, Anyway? (Recent Releases From Steven Mirassou’s Not-Quite-Family-Named Brands)
After six generations of pressing grapes in California, the Mirassou family has only one son left who owns a wine brand: Steven Mirassou. But he can’t legally use his own name on his bottles, despite the fact that Mirassou’s have been making wine since the mid-1800s, probably longer than any other CA winemaking family. He…
Cuckoo For Pou-Fu (“Zen” Sauvignon Blanc From Salon des Vins de Loire 2012)
Readers here could be forgiven – what with all of the French wine mini-review action, and the Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Loire features running here lately – for thinking that 1WineDude.com has gone totally Francophile. But then, after I start pumping out the coverage from my recent Napa jaunt, you’ll probably start calling me a CA-o-phile……