Category: Reviews
Great Finds in Grocery Store Wine
Amazing. You can put your name on a list for wine or beer that sells out in 10 minutes. Now that’s customer service. The kind you might expect at a small store in the older neighborhoods of a big city or a small town. Or if you’re an important customer at the big wine retailer. Not a huge mega-store that sits along the freeway in the suburbs. It’s the kind of service that builds clientele, not just customers.
Continue readingQué Syrah and Pinot Noir! Olson Ogden Wines
This beautiful small lot Syrah is opaque, an inky purple with gorgeous ripe fruit. Blueberries, blackberries and rich baking spices on the nose, reminded Joe of a succulent pie. Once in the mouth, we tasted more of the blackberry and blueberry flavors, brown sugar and cloves, with a nice toasty oak on a finish that ended in gobs of fruit, spice, vanilla and velvety tannins.
Continue readingTurkey and Cannellini beans with Terlato Pinot Grigio
2006 Cornerstone Cellars Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
When a bottle of something like the wine being reviewed today comes in, I know that if I let it age for a bit it will become everything the wine maker, and wine drinkers for that matter, hope it will become. By opening it while it is so young, not only am I not tasting it when it has reached it’s full potential, I am ensuring that one of a finite number of bottles of something special will never be tasted.
Continue readingPolenta and Meat Sauce paired with Ruffino Chianti Classico
Somewhere Over the Rhine: Riesling
When you mention Riesling, many will say “Oh, I don’t really like sweet wines, ” assuming all wines labeled Rieslings are sweet. However, Riesling can fall anywhere on the spectrum from bone dry to an intensely-concentrated sweetness, with variances in between. Riesling is one of the varietals most determined by its terroir, and wines can differ in their level of alcohol by volume. Many of the classic German semisweet version are 8% alcohol by volume or less, while newer, dryer Alsace and Austrian Rieslings are around 12%.
Continue readingKismet and the Most AMAZING Texas Wine
This wine is liquid nectar! Peaches, apricots, honey. You know the famous Meg Ryan scene in “When Harry Met Sally?” You just thought she was acting. My guess is they gave her a glass of something like this right before they shot that scene.
Continue readingIt’s Old vs. New Guard at First Houston Wine Conference
Gary Vaynerchuk talked about “The Changing Face of Wine,” during which he piped, “For all the wholesalers out there … [expletive] you; there’s a reason I left Russia.” Which was pretty darned funny considering he followed a guy who works for one of the biggest distributor/wholesaler cartels in the United States. Directed at the 3-tier system, Gary V. refers to draconian post-Prohibition state laws that bar consumers from buying wine sold by out-of-state retailers.
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