Eleanor Garvin and Dennis Sherman traveled to France from Maryland on one-way tickets in 1983 and cooked their way through several wine regions before permanently settling in Burgundy. Could there be a better way to learn about the food and wine of France and Burgundy in particular? I don’t think so. That knowledge, accumulated over 30 years spent getting to […]
Concannon Vineyard has a long history in California’s Livermore Valley. Their history is closely connected to Cabernet Sauvignon (and Petite Sirah, but that’s a story for another time.) We recently had the opportunity to taste three Concannon Cabernet Sauvignons during a virtual tasting with Concannon winemaker, James Foster. The International #CabernetDay tasting offered the opportunity to dig into the history […]
September 1 is #CapClassiqueDay, a day set aside to celebrate South Africa’s premium sparkling wines. Cap Classique is made using Méthode Cap Classique (MCC) — the traditional method (as in Champagne) where the second fermentation takes place in the bottle. These sparkling beauties are made in a variety of styles, from grape varieties that you might expect and a few […]
We’re celebrating this #PinotNoirDay in true wine geek fashion with a tasting of three Pinot Noirs made by a winery with a history closely tied to Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. In fact, I’ve read in several places that Gary Farrell, the man and the winery, helped establish the Russian River Valley’s reputation for fine Pinot Noir. We received these […]
Carrie Wynkoop established Cellar 503 out of a passion for Oregon wine and necessity. Specifically, she looked for a wine club that curated wines from small, boutique wineries throughout Oregon and couldn’t find one. So Carrie put her enthusiasm and knowledge of Oregon wines together with her prior business experience and established Cellar 503 in 2015. I recently met Carrie […]
Several days ago we opened a very special bottle of wine: Colmant Absolu Zero Dosage NV. Peter eased the cork from the bottle and poured both of us a glass. As we watched the bubbles rise in our glasses many fond memories of visiting Colmant Cap Classique & Champagne in South Africa’s Franschhoek Valley came back to us. There is […]
Portugal’s Alentejo wine region is a warm one. João Barroso, Director of Sustainability for Wines of Alentejo Sustainability Program (WASP), recently told a group of wine media and writers during a teleconference that the region routinely experiences some of the warmest temperatures in Europe. It is also prone to drought. These factors coupled with climate change prompted the region’s wineries […]
Before we visited Tyrrell’s Wines in October 2019, as part of the Wine Media Conference held in the Hunter Valley, I didn’t have a full appreciation for the history behind the winery. But standing beside the ironbark slab hut built by Edward Tyrrell, when he settled 320 acres along the Brokenback Range at Pokolbin in 1858, brought that history alive. […]
Firing Blancs, the third book in the Felix Hart wine buyer series, is just as funny as the first two. It documents Felix’s further adventures as the wine buyer for a large English supermarket chain. The author Peter Stafford-Bow has a great sense of humor and an entertaining writing style. This is a fun book to sit and read in […]
Stuart Smith knew he needed to look to the mountains of Napa Valley, not the valley floor, to find a site that would allow him to make the elegant, balanced, acid-driven wines he enjoyed drinking. He found what he was looking for in a 200-acre property on Spring Mountain. The property had been home to a small vineyard in the […]
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.