My friend’s John and Irene have an online wine store (Topochines.com) that sells Croatian wine as well as wines from a few other countries. The wines are always unique and from off the beaten path wineries. I had sampled some of the Croatian wine and knew that I needed to introduce these wines to others in Charleston. I decided to put together a wine tasting and invited some of my wine pals to partake. Happily, I ended up being 15 folks who heeded the call. It turned out that we sampled a total of 12 wines: six Croatian wines, four…
Leave a CommentCategory: White wine
Surviving Sunday in the Culinary Village At this year’s Charleston Wine and Food Festival, I attended the Culinary Village in Marion Square. This is my second year. And like last year, I chose to go on Sunday because they offer a “local resident” ticket at just $95.00 versus the regular price of $135.00. I may decide to pay the extra $40.00 and go on Friday or Saturday next year to see if I am missing anything. Start with a Hearty Breakfast One of the things I learned last year is that the food lines are obscenely long. And when you…
3 Comments
When I close my eyes and think of Arizona, I think of many things. Wine and winemaking do not come to mind. Enter Aridus Wine Company and that all changes. Arizona Wine Industry, briefly The first commercially planted vineyards in Arizona began cropping up in the 1970s. There are three wine growing regions in AZ: Verde Valley, Willcox AVA and Sonoita AVA. Of these three regions over 70% of all wine grapes grown in Arizona are sourced from the Willcox AVA. The industry is considered youthful and exuberant with wine quality being “all over the map” from amateurish to award-winning.…
Leave a Comment
Fall Roundup – New Styles of Two Familiar Varieties This post is part two of my fall wine roundup. Different than the last post, you will undoubtedly recognize the two grapes referenced in the post, but you may not have tasted wine like these. The grapes are Pinot Grigio and Pinot Noir. These two cousins make incredible wine but depending on where the grapes grow and how the wine is made changes everything. And remember the comments will be short and to the point and end with a LOVE, LIKE, NMS (not my style), or GLove (Gary loves it) Pinot Grigio/Gris …
Leave a Comment
Time flies way too fast. As I look back at the various new wines I have tried, I can see empty bottles with handwritten notes overtook my desk and found their way onto the bookshelf. That’s not good. But what that means is that means it is time for the Fall Wine Roundup. A roundup means the comments will be short and to the point and end with a LOVE, LIKE, NMS (not my style), or GLove (Gary loves it, but it’s NMS) I am breaking this roundup into a couple different posts. This is Roundup #1 which includes two…
Leave a Comment
Ehlers Estate Wine with a Purpose When on a wine tasting trip in Napa Valley, it is easy to get lost in the blur of so much wine. There are vineyards at every turn and tasting rooms for wineries dotting the valley from top to bottom. It is so easy for several wine tasting experiences to blend into a single event. That was not the case for the tasting we had Ehlers Estate. They knocked it out of the park. Our experience at Ehlers Estate was the first one of the day at ten o’clock in the morning. I am…
Leave a Comment
The Russian River Valley is a designated AVA* that resides within the larger Northern Sonoma AVA. AVAs located with a larger AVA share the characteristics of that AVA but also have a more unique set of attributes that further define that specific smaller portion of the region. It could be the soil type, the weather patterns or any number of things. The AVA that appears on the bottle is always the one that represents where the vineyards are precisely located. As such, the smaller AVA will always trump the larger if the vines all reside within the smaller (or sub)…
2 Comments
This post about Kelly Fleming Wines is a collaboration with my friend and fellow blogger Amber Burke of www.winetraveleats.com. She is based in Napa and well connected. Our friendship was online based for months before we actually met, but once we did at the Wine Writers Education Conference (WWET), we quickly went from online friends to family. Gary and I could not have had the magical experiences that we did without her, and we are forever grateful. Now we talk all the time, so it only made sense to share this experience jointly. Amber Comments: One of the things that…
Leave a Comment