“This would be impressive, really, if you could see any of it.” We’re driving through a winding, makeshift “road” of mud and ditches in the hills of Constantia. I’m wincing in sciatic pain with every bump, which come approximately forty nanoseconds apart courtesy of the damage done by a South African winter of intense rainfall…
Tag: wine review
Highlights From The 2013 Nederburg Wine Auction
Ok… so… South African wine is almost hopelessly underpriced. As in, shot-themselves-in-the-foot-and-will-be-limping-through-the-U.S.-wine-market-for-a-few-more-years underpriced. Which means that exciting bargains exist for the budget-conscious wine lover who’s willing to seek out the best wines from SA. That’s the big take-away for me from my time speaking at the 2013 Nederburg Wine Auction near Cape Town earlier this…
Brett May Not Be The Enemy (Talking Brett With MW Christy Canterbury, And Tasting WineSmith’s Crucible)
I’ve long waged a sort of mini-war (no height jokes!) on brettanomyces. Equating it to barnyard, horse sweat, and Band-Aid stinkiness in vino, as someone who’d personally rather go for the naked, unabashed, nowhere-to-hide purity of wines like Mosel Riesling over the bombast of overdone modern red wines, I hated how Brett buried wines in…
Because It Takes A Philly Boy To Show You Californians How To Make Syrah (Kieran Robinson Recent Releases)
A few weeks ago I got an intriguing email from a California vintner; intriguing in that he was, he told me, originally from my neck of the woods (near Philly in Southeastern PA), and would soon be in town for a wedding. Could we get together over lunch to taste some of the wines he’d…