Earlier this year, I received a rather interestingly odd invitation to judge a wine competition. Now, there’s nothing particularly odd about me being invited to judge, as I’ve had the good fortune of judging several wine competitions over the last decade-plus, and probably should consider myself an old-timer seasoned veteran of wine competitions at this…
Category: wine review
Natural Science (Rhys Vineyards Recent Releases)
Given its current darling status among the wine media cognoscenti, I suppose that I should have been predisposed to like the wines that Rhys Vineyards is plying. But the first two minutes of a Zoom tasting with winemaker Jeff Brinkman (formerly of R.H. Phillips, Antica, and Husch Vineyards & Winery) almost sealed the deal before…
Yo Yo YO Sannio! (A Sannio Campania Deep Dive in Philly)
A few months ago, I braved the utter hellishness of I-76 rush hour traffic (along with several other fine Philadelphia-area wine pro folks) to attend a media dinner at the venerable Old City restaurant Panorama. The star attraction? Wines from Italy’s Sannio DOC in Campania. Sannio was awarded DOC status in the 1990s, though its…
“The Circle Is Now Complete” (Visiting Donnafugata in Vittoria)
I’ve spent a good amount of time getting to know (and, of course, writing about) Donnafugata, one of the largest and most important producers in Sicily. Hell, I was even present for their first-ever retrospective tasting of Ben Rye (which either makes me insanely lucky, or old, or probably both). During the previous decade+, I’ve…