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Content about Bordeaux wine

April 7, 2013
Don Melchor's Swing Coach

Whether you are Tiger Woods or Enrique Tirado, if you're going to be the best, it helps to have someone who will tell you what you can do better.

Chile makes some of the world’s best Cabernet Sauvignons, both actually and potentially, and one of its iconic ones is Concha y Toro’s Don Melchor.  Since 1997, Enrique Tirado has been responsible for making Don Melchor, and, like every other winemaker in the world, he is a good son who first gives praise to the virtues of Mother Vineyard, where, as legend and faith have it, every great wi

March 10, 2013
Fine Tuning

A conundrum: Estates are always upgrading techniques and facilities.  So why do so many older vintages taste delicious?

Great wine estates, and wine estates striving to be great, often give much contemplation and spend huge amounts of money making incremental changes they believe will make their wines even better or at least not let them fall behind their competitors.

January 25, 2013
Left Bank, Right Stuff

260 Medoc crus bourgeois chateaux have an offer you shouldn't refuse.

Earlier this week, I had lunch with the folks from the Alliance of Crus Bourgeois du Medoc at Keens Steakhouse on West 36th in New York, a perfect match in terms of Bordeaux being the go-to wine for red-meat lovers and the long-standing traditions of both the wine region and the historic restaurant, which opened up a mere 30 years after the Left Bank’s classification of 1855.

December 27, 2012
Traveblogue 2012

Some thoughts from there and here on the passing year.

As a writer specializing in the coverage of wine, food and travel, 2012 afforded me the opportunity to make several reporting trips to Europe, as well as to revisit some American venues.  During the long overnight flights and airport delays, I have had time to reflect on what I have seen and what I have tasted.

December 18, 2012
Europe's Wine Fairs 2013

Now is the time to start planning your attendance at next year's wine trade fairs in France, Italy, Germany and England.

With the buying public once again opening its wine wallets, and with the euro more of a bargain that it has been in recent times, 2013 might be an ideal year to consider attending Vinexpo, Vinitaly or one of the other European wine trade fairs.

The key dates are:

October 21, 2012
Bordeaux Under One Roof

Bordeaux Under One Roof, banner event of the Bordeaux Wine Council (CIVB), will reach new heights in 2012.

Bordeaux Under One Roof, banner event of the Bordeaux Wine Council (CIVB), will reach new heights in 2012. On October 25th, Bordeaux Under One Roof will take place overlooking New York City's eminent skyline on the 61st Floor of the Empire State Building, and the CIVB is pleased to invite you to attend.

August 27, 2012
Aconcagua Valley

Aconcagua, though small, is well-recognized as one of Chile’s premier regions for wine-growing with a prominent past helping to set the wines of Chile on the map.

To the north of Santiago is the Aconcagua Valley, a small winegrowing area of just 1,098 hectares best-known for its production of red wines. In fact, Aconcagua has earned international prestige as one of Chile’s highest regarded wines.

July 12, 2012
A Delicious Dilemma for Portuguese Wines

Good quality, good prices.  Now, how to you get people to try them?

Recently, I had the opportunity to spend a week in Portugal drinking fine wines and eating good foods as I talked with winemakers from up and down the countryside. My visit included wineries in the Douro Valley, the Vinho Verde area, Bairrada, and Lisboa, as well as sitting in on presentations by winemakers from Alentejo, which I have previously toured, and from Tejo, which I have not.

June 21, 2012
Discovering Colli Euganei

Out-of-way wine region provides a taste of Bordeaux in Northern Italy.

When I was invited recently to visit the Euganean Hills as an adjunct to Vulcania 2012, a conference in the town of Soave about wines grown on volcanic soils, I must admit I had never heard of it.  Or them.  So I pulled down my 10-year-old version of the Oxford Companion to Wine to look it up.  It wasn’t there!  Silly me – try the Italian name, “Colli Euganei.”  It stil

May 6, 2012
Wines of Chile~Worthy and Well Priced

Wines of Chile

     

 

 

May 1, 2012
Almaviva Winery~Chile's Gold Standard

Almaviva winery began in 1997 when the Baroness Philippine de Rothschild recognized the potential of Chilean terroir and entered into an agreement with Don Eduardo Guilisasti Tagle, Chairman of Concha y Toro, a premier Chilean producer.

I had the very good fortune of travelling to Chile recently and to visit many vineyards, meet several winemakers and other winery personnel and to taste a selection of Chile's many and varied wines.

May 1, 2012
Colchagua & Cachapoal

Nestled in the center of the Central Valley are two valleys Colchagua and Cachapoal, that, together, make up the Rapel Valley. 

Nestled in the center of the Central Valley are two valleys Colchagua and Cachapoal, that, together, make up the Rapel Valley. While neither currently holds a legal classification, each had made a name for itself as its own entity boasting unique terroir.

April 10, 2012
Bordeaux’s 2011 Vintage a Keeper, But the Dance over Prices Continues

As was the case with the 2008 vintage, the jumbled weather in 2011 had all the right elements – sunshine, rain, heat, cold – in all the wrong places, thus gathering early predictions of gloom.

Coming just days before Easter, Bordeaux pulled another rabbit from its hat with the 2011 vintage wines during last week’s barrel tastings in the fabled French wine region.
As was the case with the 2008 vintage, the jumbled weather in 2011 had all the right elements – sunshine, rain, heat, cold – in all the wrong places, thus gathering early predictions of gloom.

March 28, 2012
Daughter of the Blue Nun

To new owner Bettina Sichel, all her Laurel Glen wines need are better marketing exposure.

What do you do if your father is the man who made Blue Nun the biggest wine celebrity in the U.S.?  If you’re Bettina Sichel, you follow in his footsteps and become a wine marketing expert.

February 12, 2012
Mendoza's Glittering DiamAndes

Many Bordeaux wine families have branched out in recent years with estates in Chile and Argentina.  For Jean-Jacques Bonnie, winegrowing is universal in philosophy, if different in practice.

I had met Jean-Jacques Bonnie just once before, about two years ago in Mendoza, but there was no mistaking which table was his when I briefly sat down at the bar in the Brasserie Cognac in Manhattan last week and glanced around the room – the long, wavy blond mane that a 19th Century cavalry officer would have loved was unmistakable, that and the fact that a large decanter of red wine was

February 1, 2012
Vertical of the Century's First Decade

As a vertical tasting of Chateau d'Issan's first 10 vintages of the 21st Century shows, Bordeaux wines are flying high at a level of consistent quality not previously experienced.

It seems like only minutes ago that we were deciding what Champagne we were buying to drink in the new century while worrying whether we were going to catch the millennium bug.  But already we have raced through the first decade of the 21st Century and are well into the second.

January 13, 2012
All About Wines of Chile

The story of Chilean wine begins over 450 years ago when Spanish settlers first arrived in Santiago.

A brief history…. 

July 28, 2011
The Kingdom of Navarra~Kingly Wines

The Kingdom of Navarra is producing some noteworthy and delicious wines. 

  

July 25, 2011
New Harvard MBA Course: Bordeaux 1999

The elite B-school wins a prestigious wine competition.  How does your wine knowledge measure up?

June 16, 2011
The Once and Future Rioja

Rioja wines have been synonymous with unchanging tradition. These striking architectural symbols proclaim that style—and change—have arrived in Rioja. 

March 8, 2011
Looking for a (Wine) Fair Deal

For those of us in the wine and hospitality trade, attending one of the international wine fairs in France, Italy or England is a required life experience.  Get ready to book your flights - the first one opens next month.

March 2, 2011
Beyond Port

In a rapidly evolving and expanding wine world, even a certified wine wonk should be excused for being oblivious to a heretofore humble wine region or even to new wines emerging from classic European vineyards. Take, for example, Douro table wi

February 28, 2011
Thoughts on Open That Bottle Night

An annual wine celebration highlights the differences in how people who drink a lot - professionally or as learned amateurs - prefer to enjoy and evaluate their wines.