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Wine Competitions – Should You Believe the Results?
It’s Friday afternoon and you really want a bottle of wine to enjoy that night with dinner. You go into your local wine shop / supermarket / gun and wine shop (!) and peruse the shelves . . .but how to decide what to buy? All of a sudden, you start noticing ‘beacons’ drawing you Read more…
It’s Not Over Yet!!!!
It always amazes me during the Fall how articles come out talking about the grape harvest as a whole – quality, weather, people – and they tend to almost always focus on the ‘North Coast’. Napa, Sonoma, Russian River … I guess these are the only places that seem to matter?!?!?!?
Lucky Guy . . .
I’ve always been of the belief that you should love what you do for a living . . .or make some changes in your life. It’s a pretty simplistic concept, but one that I’ve always felt was worth living by.
Rain Rain Go Away?!?!?!?
As I type this latest edition to my blog, it’s raining outside – not cats and dogs, just slightly sprinkling. That said, even the slightest precipitation can seem like a torrential down pour, and quite detrimental, to some . . .
Decorum on the Web – What’s So Tough to Understand?!??!?
I am simply amazed at the lack of decorum some have shown recently on blogs and on bulletin boards that I frequent. The fact that it is becoming commonplace to go well beyond ‘constructive criticism’ and get downright nasty is just a sign of how far this medium still has to go . . . Read more…
What To Do In Tougher Times?!?!?!
There have been a number of recent stories about wineries making changes of some sort in order to ride out the downturn in our industry. The most visible current story involves Pali Winery, a Santa Barbara County-based winery that actually has been proactive in trying to move wines.
When Is a Wine Considered ‘Manipulated’?!?
What in the heck am I talking about? Can it be that wine is not simply an all-natural alcoholic beverage that is the result of no human intervention whatsoever?!?!?!? Many wineries obviously want you to think that this is the case! When reading ads or perusing websites of many wineries, their message is that their Read more…
Conventional Wisdoms – Smaller is Better in the Wine Industry . . . Or Is It?
It seems that with most things in life, bigger is considered better . . . In the wine industry, though, conventional wisdom is that ‘smaller is better’ . . . smaller yields, smaller tanks, smaller presses, smaller case volumes, etc. ‘Smaller’ wineries produce better wine then ‘bigger’ wineries, right? Well, just as with all things Read more…
When 30 Brix May Still Not Be High Enough . . . .
Brix is a measure of sugar levels in grapes in the wine industry. It roughly translates as follows: a grape sample showing a reading of 20 brix means that that sample has approximately 200 grams of sugar per liter of solution . . .or almost 2 lbs. of sugar per gallon! Yikes! It also means Read more…
Fist-A-Cuffs in the Tasting Room!
A few weeks back, I walked into our tasting room to find 4 customers arguing with each other. I stayed back and listened as best as I could to try to understand what was going on, and this is what I heard . . . No.1: I smell citrus and spice from this wine. No. Read more…
