Wine and cheese can be a great pairing. Read about our recent tasting of Lodi wines with cheese from around the world. It left us wanting more of both and planning a visit to downtown Lodi.
Bob Koth knows the exact moment that started him on the path to making wine from German and Austrian grape varieties. He was having lunch with his daughter, Ann Marie, in Mainz, Germany in the early 1990s. Don’t ask him what he ate, that’s not the memorable part of the story. Ask him about the wine, it was a German Riesling.
Ferrari is a well-recognized name around the world. The fast, red, sexy car might be your first association. But consider this. Ferrari is also about sparkling wine made in the north of Italy, in the Trentino region, and Ferrari Rosé NV is perfect for Valentine’s Day.
We recently tasted a collection of French sparkling wines, but none were Champagne. What’s the difference you ask? Well, it boils down to location, production methods and allowed varieties.
A recent tasting of Cabernet Franc from around the world got me thinking about the variety. I love the flavors and aromas Cabernet Franc produces, that combination of dark fruit, berries and vegetal notes. But what I didn’t know is that Merlot the parent of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Carmenère. Pretty impressive offspring, I’d say.
I think of wine grapes in much the same way I do of an artist’s set of paints. Both can be used to create a potential masterpiece. An artist’s set of paints can create anything from a modern abstract to something more evocative of the Old Masters. Will it become a Jackson Pollock or a Johannes Vermeer?
When Pinot Noir is good, it can just defy words. Silky, earthy, complex, fruity, delicate, weightless…all at the same time. And then there is the color, transparent garnet, almost the color of iodine at times. Pinot Noir will always be my favorite varietal wine.
We recently had a great vineyard tour at Stolpman Vineyards, located in the Ballard Canyon AVA within the Santa Ynez AVA. It was a warm December afternoon and we were met by Joe Neenan who took us on a driving and walking tour of the vineyards. We wrote about that tour in a prior post.
Wine tasting is fun any time of year, but tramping through a vineyard in December? It might sound crazy, except that we recently did just that and had a great tour thanks to Joe Neenan, ‘Passionista’, from Stolpman Vineyards.
This is the second post reviewing a group of South African wines we received as tasting samples from Cape Classics, an importer of South African (and French) wines in to the US, with distribution in 49 states. We dedicated the prior post to the white wines in the selection.
We enjoy wine, food and travel. Pull That Cork is a chronicle of our wine adventures, the food and wine pairings we create and our travels which are increasingly organized around wine.
