To get a feel for how important the culture of the vine is in the tiny and picturesque hilltop town of Villabuena in Rioja Alavesa, consider this: Villabuena has roughly 317 inhabitants, and just over ten percent of them (about 40) are wineries; so the town hosts 1 winery for every 8 or so people….
Category: wine review
Rare By Nature, Rare By Nurture (The Inside View Of Rutherglen Rare Topaque And Muscat)
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…
“Measured And Forceful”: Bodega Contador Recent Releases (And Whether Or Not A $400 Wine Should Evoke Place)
“Lento y fuerte.” This is how Benjamin Romeo – possibly Rioja’s most celebrated modern winemaker since his 2004 Contador red wine received a 100 point score from The Wine Advocate – described how he speaks. Measured and forceful. Which, it turns out, is a perfect descriptor for most of Romeo’s wines, as well as for…
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 –…