I recently received a press release from the Wine School of Philadelphia, with whom I’ve been discussing taking part in their Sommelier Smackdown event series (basically, in a Smackdown event the Wine School staff take on local wine personalities and wine pros in a contest to match up wines with dinner recipes, and usually much…
From Transylvania Twist to Castell Franken Wine (Tasting German Silvaner)
If I had to sum up the history of Silvaner, the ancient wine grape that probably originated in Transylvania but whose spirit now resides firmly in Germany’s Franken region, in as few words as possible, it would probably look something like this: Short shrift. The problem is not that Silvaner isn’t any good. In fact,…
Mosel Hottie Crowned 61st German Wine Queen
Today, I’m closing the loop and following up on the contest to find the next German Wine Queen, who was officially crowned last week in a final gala event featuring the six finalists culled from Germany’s 13 wine regions. The winner was Sonja Christchurch from the Mosel, who is a recent business graduate and has…
Weekly Twitter Wine Mini-Reviews Round-up for 2009-10-10
07 Davis Bynum Chardonnay (Russian River Valley): U might be able to approximate this by stuffing a croissant into a glass of grain alcohol. # 07 Davis Bynum Pinot Noir (Russian River Valley): Enormous ultra-concentrated offering. Red berry fruit is nice but is fighting for its life # 04 Heron Hill Eclipse Red (NY): Call…