by Tony Aspler
It’s in your Mind, Not the Wine I don’t remember the year exactly, or the place, but the wine was indisputably Château d’Yquem 1921. It was Christmas time and I had been invited for the weekend to the home of a London friend whose parents lived in Scotland. I believe it was 1966 or ’67. The other house guest was a rising young professor from Oxford named Edward DeBono, the philosopher who came up with the theory of Lateral Thinking. My friend’s father knew I was interested in wine and he said he had something ‘rather interesting’ in the cellar. He disappeared for a few minutes and emerged with a dusty bottle of Yquem ’21, certainly the best twentieth-century vintage of the world’s most celebrated dessert wine, as legendary as the Cheval Blanc 1947. The colour was...
by Subhash Arora
The mother-of-all weddings of you-know-who’s daughter in Paris last week and a photo of the newly married couple holding the glass of a DP, Krug or Cristal to raise a toast to each other made me think again of a wine topic close to my heart- how to hold a wineglass? I don’t mean to analyze how the couple is holding their champagne glasses. In fact the bride is holding it quite correctly. And as one would expect at the wedding planned so meticulously, right shape of the champagne glass, a flute has been used. (One never uses the saucer shaped glass – the bubbles, the most enjoyable part of the bubbly disappear faster). Even the level of champagne poured is correct-it should be three-fourths full or even slightly more, as one never swirls champagne for the same reason. Th...
by Jennifer Rosen
For Colorado wine lovers, July 1st was the best of times and the worst of times. It brought us two goodies: wine doggy-bags and in-store tastings, but they came tacked on to House Bill 1021, which lowers the drunk-driving threshold from 0.1% to 0.08%. Ever bid a sad farewell to unfinished wine in a restaurant? Or choke down more than you want because, dammit, you paid for it? Now you can cork it and take it home. The doggy-bag provision was a concession to restaurateurs, worried that the new DUI limit would scare people away from ordering bottles at all. The state doesn’t care about open containers, but some local jurisdictions do, so restaurants are being told to shove the cork deep, seal it with tape or paraffin, bag it, box it, hogtie and handcuff it, put it in your t...
by Jennifer Rosen
Myths about wine don’t just take on a life of their own, they collect disciples. Sommeliers, producers, drinkers and, yup, even wine writers cling to notions that simply ain’t true, not surprising in a field that changes as fast as a lunch-hour shopper at Loehmann’s. Here’s a short guide to wine misinformation and lies that just won’t die. Now go win some bets. Age: A necessity back when young wine had the softness of Brillo and the finish of Drano. Nowadays, most wine comes ready to drink and doesn’t get any better. A few can still go the distance, but they’re not for everyone. The bottle giveth complexity, but it taketh away fruit. As winemaker Andre Tchelistcheff put it, “Appreciating old wine is like making love to a very old lady. It is possible. It can e...
by Jennifer Rosen
This week, Biography looks at one of wine’s rising stars – a sensuous white grape, as renowned for her troubled background as for her seductive charm, who triumphed over misfortune and won our hearts. A meteoric rise, struggles with leaf rot, a near-miss with extinction. Exotic, enigmatic, temperamental, long shunned by the mainstream, veiled in mystery and tragedy, who is the real Viognier? Famously coy about her origins, Viognier will only allude vaguely to a childhood in ancient Greece, or was that Rome? over 2000 years ago. What’s clear is that she arrived in the Rhone Valley around 600 B.C. and that her early years were unscathed by the scars of grafting and clonal selection that traumatized so many of her peers. A gawky adolescent, her star did not rise immediately....
by Darryl Beeson
"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing," reads the opening of Norman Maclean's novello, "A River Runs Through It," painting an evocative portrait of the sons of a small-town Montana minister. Actor Fred MacMurray, grandson of a horseback traveling Presbyterian minister in Scotland could have written an equally to-the-heart story. In the late 1930's, MacMurray discovered approximately 900 acres of perfect Sonoma land, with the Russian River running through it, perfect for his love of fly fishing. He bought it. He ranched it. In the mid 1950's, he brought his new bride, June Haver, to his beloved retreat. Haver, groomed by Fox to be the next Betty Grable, left the film industry wanting, and later with their children embraced this more sim...
by Darryl Beeson
The word "organic" on a label of wine has tended to be the kiss of death towards sales. There has been a small, sometimes tie-died, always dedicated audience for all things certified organic. The remaining vastness of the marketplace views such efforts as being more expensive and less full-filling. Lets face it; The wines snobs make wine drinking geeky enough without compounding things with tofu inspired methodology. "If you don't get your flavors from the soil," asks Napa's Frogs Leap Winery founder John Williams, "where are you going to get them from?" Some winemakers opt for more oak involvement while others seek overripe grapes with higher alcohol levels. The insightful makers know that the soil and all aspects of the environment, what the French call "terroir," results in the best...
by Darryl Beeson
They don’t call the ocean “the drink” for nothing. My mates and I are motivated more by the peat of the malt than by the pelt of the waves. Our team of three boats, nestled in a hundred boat flotilla, proceeds to seek the finest of Scotland’s single malt Scotches. This is The Classic Malts Cruise of the western coasts and isles of Scotland. We are the loud, the bedewed, the marines. It is July. And it is ice-cube cold.. Wearing rain gear for obvious reasons and “Wellies” to keep feet warm and dry, our gang of six sail “The Chantilly” from the port of Oban, bound for the Tallisker distillery on the Isle of Skye. Mark Twain once observed that the coldest winter he had ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco. Twain obviously never embarked upon 200-mile mid-summer v...
by Madelyn Miller
Carmen winemaker Mastias Lecaros is doing all kinds of exciting things. When I was in Chile, I of course tasted his wonderful wines. But it took a trip to Dallas by him for me to be lucky enough to discuss the man behind these exciting wines. I tasted his organic wines, and honestly, I could not believe it. I am sure they were organic, but they tasted robust and wonderful. Matías Lecaros belongs to a traditional Chilean family that has been involved in agriculture since the 17th century. It was then when the first Lecaros arrived in Chile to explore new territories in South America. His father's family is originally from Panquehue, where they pioneered the plantation of vineyards in the Aconcagua Valley. Matías' family is based close to Maipo Valley, where his childhood was ...
by Jennifer Rosen
Pinot. The word keeps popping up like Paris Hilton in your spam box. Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Grigio. What’s up with that? Welcome to this brilliant, dysfunctional family of grapes, whose ancestral vault was recently pillaged by DNA-crazed scientists, to reveal some shocking skeletons. Named for the pinecone that its clusters resemble, Pinot is one of the oldest cultivated wine grapes. 1st century Romans were crazy for it and carried around little papyrus vintage charts only they kept drinking too early because the years went backward. Not long after, a Pinot forefather went slumming, crossing paths with a deadbeat floozy named Gouais Blanc. This grape is so awful that the French won’t grow it and it was outlawed thrice in the Middle Ages. That didn’t ...
