What happiness to find exactly the style of wine we like in a new grape variety. For me the first choice is usually red wine, light, fresh, and bright. Mountain wines, grown where it is a little cooler. Less sugar, less earth, more pebble and snap. So with great pleasure, I stumbled upon Foradori, [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Country'
2007 Serra Paitin Barbaresco
April 24th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Color, Country, Italy, Piedmont, Red
Barbaresco. The wine in a moment, but first let’s enjoy that wonderful name. Bar bar bar is the sound the Greeks heard when they met the Medes and Persians and other strangers. They called these Βαρβαροι, hence barbarians. (Hottentot –the name Europeans once gave to people living in southwest Africa also reflects the sound of [...]
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Fiano di Avellino Mastroberardino 2007
February 27th, 2011 · No Comments · Italy, Red, Uncategorized
…he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent. Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Not all of us are as cautious as Gabriel Oak, the stoic farmer who [...]
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Dupéré Barrera Côtes de Provence 2008
February 12th, 2011 · No Comments · Color, Country, France, Red
Nous avons notre propre vision du vin, nous sommes dans le monde du vin sans être du monde du vin. We have our own perspective. We live in the world of wine without being entirely of it. – Le Blog des Dupéré Barrera One beloved model — or trope as we said in college [...]
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Cerasuolo di Vittoria Classico, Azienda Agricola Cos 2008
February 6th, 2011 · No Comments · Color, Red, Sicily
Surely wine writing is a form of short fiction. Far less anchored to this world than a short story. Rarely, however, do we get Continental philosophy. Consider these lines from the owners of the Cos vineyard in Sicily. (We could laugh at the computer translation — but people who cannot do better live in glass [...]
Visciole Querci’Antica Velenosi
January 29th, 2011 · No Comments · Italy, Red
Quasi non bevera vino se non de ciriege o de granate. (He drank almost no wine except cherry wine) Vespasiano da Bisticci, biographer of Duke Federico da Montefeltro (1422-1482) Duke Federico drank wine rarely and then only the sour cherry wine which we know today as Visciole. Under the influence of an occasional glass, he [...]
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Chassagne-Montrachet “Les Champs-Gains” 2005
December 23rd, 2010 · 1 Comment · Color, Country, France, Red
“I think it not unpleasing to insert in this place an account of the site of Dijon…It is a stronghold with very solid walls, built in the midst of a plain, a very pleasant place, the lands rich and fruitful so that when the fields are ploughed once the seed is sown and a great [...]
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El Castro de Valtuille Bierzo 2006
November 23rd, 2010 · No Comments · Color, Country, Red, Spain, Uncategorized
Bierzo is a recent discovery for many of us. I like the darker, richer qualities of the Castro – other Bierzos are brighter and shinier. This one has the briar and turf qualities of, say, a Rhône wine but with that characteristic Spanish bitterness. And qualities of light and high brass which can only be [...]
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Dinastía Vivanco Reserva 2004
November 21st, 2010 · 3 Comments · Color, Country, Red, Spain
We could divide the taste of wine into five parts: sugar which we call fruit, acid for balance, alcohol — experienced as texture and heat in the mouth, tannin from the skins and stems, and oak from the barrel. Of these flavors, oak is the only one added by the vintner. The others result from [...]
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2008 Luna Beberide Bierzo
November 8th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Color, Country, Red, Spain
Asturii scrutador pallidus auri – “Pale seekers after gold”– Lucan, Pharsalia Bierzo was once the home of the Astures, fair-haired Celts (“pallidus“) who lived in stone forts and raided the occupying Roman force for centuries. From their isolated redoubts, these stubborn indigènes fought bitterly, men beside the women, long after most of the Iberian peninsula [...]
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