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Archive for the 'Wine' Category

Can California Wines Be Aged?

February 13, 2008 in Answers, Wine and Wine Education. 0 Comments

Question from Jessica: I recently was told by a French wine connoisseur that he would not open a California wine bottle for 10 years +/- as he does with most of his French wines. When I purchased the wine, they told me that California wines are to be opened young. Can you please tell me how to know when to open a wine, specifically a California wine? Thank you.

Reply: Hi, Jessica! Thanks for writing! This seems to be our French vs. California month (see previous post)!

I wish there was a simple answer to your question, but there isn’t. I’ll start by giving you the big picture. I’m going to assume we’re speaking mainly about red wines although there are whites that age well, too.

Well aged wine in a cellar.

First, the vast majority of wines are meant for early consumption no matter where they come from. For long-term aging, we’re talking about fine wine.

Second, there can be a difference in longevity between the great wines of California and Europe because of climatic differences. In most of the famous European wine-producing regions the climate errs on the cold side. Cool-climate wines tend to be higher in acid than warm-climate wines and acid is an excellent natural preservative (another natural preservative common to red wine is tannin, which comes from the grape skins). High-acid wines can be hard to drink when they’re young, but they stay lively in the bottle longer.

Most of California leans toward the warm end of the scale, so the wines are often lower in acidity. This usually makes them easy to drink when they’re young, but they may show signs of old age sooner than their cool-climate counterparts.

That’s the big picture, but exceptions abound. If you’ve heard of the “Judgement of Paris” (they’re making two movies about it!), you might be interested to know that a 30th anniversary rematch was held in 2006 pitting approximately 30-year-old wines from California (Bordeaux-types) against great French Bordeaux wines of the same age. The California wines took the top-five ranks.

Longevity can also depend on the grape variety that makes the wine and the specific region and its climate/terrain within the country or state. The variety is stated on the label for most California wines, where French wine is usually named for the region and the varieties used for commercial winemaking in the region are regulated by local authorities. For instance, Beaujolais wines, made of the Gamay grape, aren’t generally intended for long-term aging the way a fine Bordeaux (Cabernet/Merlot) or Burgundy (Pinot Noir) are. Granted, Beaujolais isn’t considered to be in the same league with fine Burgundy or Bordeaux. That’s another reason not to make general assumptions about countries and their wines. A country such as France makes some of the very finest wines in the world and also very ordinary, every-day wines and everything in between - just like California!

So, I’m not trying to dodge your question - I’m trying to suggest that it depends upon the individual wine. Given the big picture, that wine shop didn’t give you such bad advice. Better too young than too old! Please don’t feel shy about asking questions when you buy wine because a good wine shop will have a knowledgeable staff who will be happy to help you.

There’s more detail about aging in this article on our website. I hope this helps!

Cheers!
Nancy

Rating the Ratings

April 10, 2007 in Observations, Rants and Wine. 0 Comments

Here we have a wine critic who’s puzzled about how to approach a wine that got a 90 from Parker (this critic was also put off by the fact that the wine was rated by one of Parker’s employees rather than Parker himself) and an 84 from the Wine Spectator.

Wine Tasting and Evaluating

Every critic has his methods, but this one strikes me as odd, and adds to my long list of concerns about the 100-point ratings scale.

#1: Why did he seek out the opinions of others before tasting the wine himself? Sometimes you can’t avoid hearing things about high-profile brands, but it seems to me the critic should approach the evaluation without pre-conceived notions whenever possible. His write-ups include scores from other publications, which is a good, democratic idea, but he himself should start out by tasting the wine blind.

#2: His conclusion that “Someone is right and someone is wrong” regarding the 90 vs. the 84. And this, on a 6-point spread. Is anyone ever right or wrong when it comes to evaluating something that we eat or drink? Or read? Or take in at the theater? Life would be a lot simpler is this wasn’t subjective, but it is. And I don’t see a big discrepancy in that spread. Just a different take.

An 84 vs. 90 communicates to me, right or wrong, that the wine must be at least a clean, well-crafted representative of the type. Beyond that, it seems that the style suited Mr. Parker’s guy better than it did the Spectator’s. They each have a right to their opinions. We may or may not agree.

Recently, I was researching wines for a staff tasting and discovered that a highly regarded, fairly pricey Merlot we wanted to taste got a 94 from Robert Parker and, hang on for this - 78 from the Wine Spectator - pretty much a slap in its $65.00 face. Once we tasted it, we began to understand why. The “herbal note” that you expect from Merlot wasn’t subtle - it was something akin to vegetal. It was big and luscious, very clean and well made, so we respected it, but most of us weren’t crazy about it. How do you fairly score a wine like that?

My favorite wine truth

Something like that definitely needs descriptors so that those of us who aren’t vege inclined can make another selection. That’s the fatal flaw in the phoenix rising from the Wine X ashes. Justwinepoints.com goes to the ridiculous extreme that “nothing else matters”. Just the points. But numbers don’t tell you what it tastes like. I appreciate their wish to be unpretentious and concise, but it actually seems rather egotistical to suggest that we will like it simply because they say “98″. For instance, in the category of sparkling wine, the 2003 Schramsberg Cremant received 98 points. Period. No comment. So, some unknowing enthusiast might run out and buy the Cremant to go with his oysters on the half shell, completely unaware that this particular wine is sweet. Yuk! I don’t care how “good” it is - no sweet wine with my oysters, please!!! It “matters”.

I’ve already ragged sufficiently on some of the other problems with numerical ratings such as the producers of the world being at the mercy of a small handful of powerful critics and questioning how one differentiates between an 89 and a 90.

So, the debate rages on. I know that some of the flowery, over-the-top descriptors are more laughable than informative. That sort of self-indulgent writing can send you running and screaming to the numerical scores. But, don’t you think most reviewers are genuinely trying to be helpful? From the vast sea of wine publications, there’s no doubt you can find a writer or two whose tastes and sensibilities are somewhat aligned with yours, whether or not they use points. And if it tastes like a 94 to them and a 78 to you, who is right? Not that they’re mutually exclusive, but couldn’t some well-chosen words give you a better idea of what to expect in terms of aroma and flavor and whether there are any characteristics that may be controversial? Or if the critic views the wine as an outstanding or poor example of the type? Numerical ratings? I guess I’d give them a 71.

A Peek Inside ConeTech

March 28, 2007 in Wine, Wine Education and Winemaking. 1 Comment

I was just as excited about this visit as I was when I got the chance to visit Gallo– doesn’t take much for some of us, does it? A friend got me into ConeTech and I felt like I’d made a coup. And, once I was there, I felt even luckier because the place is shrouded in secrecy - no pictures allowed - they won’t risk doing anything that might leak who their clients are - and no recording. Darn! I don’t really care who their clients are - well, not too much. But I was hoping to get a podcast interview out of it! It felt like the closest thing in wine to going to the FBI, but it’s all to protect those who want the services offered by ConeTech, but don’t want anyone to know about it.

So, what is ConeTech? They’ve been de-alcoholizing wine since 1991, that’s right, 1991!!! When you go into the production area, it looks very much like the inside of a modern winery, with beautiful stainless-steel tanks and a lab, but they also have some equipment most of us wouldn’t recognize: the “spinning cone column”.

ConeTech

If you want the specs on how it works, take a look here, but the gist of it is that “Joe Winemaker” sends out a portion of the total blend to be de-alcoholized. The spinning cone first separates out the “essence” of the wine, which was described as all of the wine constituents other than alcohol and most of the water, and sets it aside. Next, the alcohol is removed from what’s left. The alcohol is sold off to Port producers, or whoever wants it, and has the appropriate license, and the low-alcohol “wine” is added back to the essence. This extremely low-alcohol wine will be blended back into the main blend at the winery.

Cone Diagram

The really cool part of the visit was we got to do what they call a “sweet spot” tasting with a control wine and then the same wine at various lower levels of alcohol. Fascinating! My knee-jerk reaction to stuff like this is that you always take your angels with your devils - I was skeptical. We tried a Zinfandel at 17% alcohol that actually carried the alcohol pretty well - just a little hot. Then at 16%, then at 15%– and wow! The fruit burst forward in a big way! Apparently, at 15%, the wine had hit its “sweet spot”. It was as if the alcohol had been masking or muffling the fruity fragrance. Very interesting. 14.5%, also very nice. At 14% it went flat. So, those are the choices a winemaker is faced with.

I asked about reverse osmosis, another way to de-alcoholize wine, but it’s not a service ConeTech chooses to provide. They firmly feel that they get superior results because they’re able to avoid subjecting the wine to high temperatures.

I have to say, I was truly impressed. Not won over, not that it matters, but impressed. The brochure says that the process has “zero effect on the wine’s integrity” but part of me still wonders what happens over the long haul and the romantic in me just plain balks at this kind of manipulation, just the way the thought of adding Mega-purple to wine made Alder “sick to his stomach.”

John Williams at Frog’s Leap very eloquently gets to the heart of the thing that bugs those of us who think of wine as a soulful product of the earth:

“Here is the major point: A healthy soil produces a healthy vine; a healthy vine produces healthy fruit; healthy fruit produces healthy wines: deep in color, deep in flavor and deep in their natural character.

Pick nearly any problem in winemaking today and you will find with a minimum of research a deep connection to farming practice… If you believe, as I do, that the essence of winemaking, the Holy Grail as it were, is to make wines that deeply reflect the soil and climate from which they emanate, it seems self-evident that you would want every molecule, every enzyme, every ester, every flavonoid, every protein, every essence, to be derived from the soil in which the grapevine is grown. And if you achieve that, the product of that vine will imbue the essential character of its place. Real quality wine.

Without soil-based flavors, we, as winemakers, are stuck with trying to manufacture those flavors on our own, Thus, ridiculously excessive overripe grapes, spinning cones, esterifying yeasts, reverse osmosis, super malo-lactic cultures, micro-oxygenization, mega-purple, flying winemakers and 200% new oak.”

Frogs Leap Label

I like the idea of getting it right in the first place, but from a practical standpoint, if the wine tastes better, then what difference does it make how you got there as long as it’s not harmful? When the practice of adding honey or sugar to the must to make better wine began in ancient times, was that considered a nauseating manipulation? What about sulfur? Is adding yeast or using barrels a manipulation?

Well, here’s something practical for you: According to Laurie Daniel of the San Jose Mercury News (sorry, they require that the article be purchased now), out of the approximately 2400 wineries in the state of California, 1650 of them at last count, that’s a whopping 68%, have sent their wine out to be de-alcoholized!

I don’t have any conclusions to draw for you, I can see both sides, but on an emotional level, I’m extremely wary. Which way will we head in the future? Science gives us more and more ways to manipulate but at the same time, the fact that biodynamic farming is going mainstream signals that we’re re-connecting with the earth. Hmmmm…

Announcing: Napa Valley Wine Radio Forums

February 23, 2007 in Blogging and Wine. 0 Comments

As I wrote the other day, we have been working long hours to bring all of our wine education information to the same place � a place to learn, a place to communicate with others that share the same passions of food & wine � A Wine Education Community.

Today, we are pleased to announce the extension of this online resource with the addition of the Napa Valley Wine Radio Forums. We hope you will share your experiences with us and other wine lovers in forums covering general wine discussion, food & wine pairing, wine travel & events, our podcast and anything else on your mind related to food and wine. Although we will moderate for inappropriate content, this will be a wide ranging discussion on all things wine related.

participate in the Blog
listen to educational podcast episodes
enjoy audio winemaker notes from Goosecross Cellars
tantalizing wine-paired recipes
communicate in forums
gain direct access to our Director of Wine Education

To participate, just register at the forums and then find the appropriate forum to post your topic.

Welcome to Napa Valley Wine Radio! We look forward to participating with you online.

Let us know what you think.

Poking More Holes in the Ratings System

January 20, 2007 in Observations and Wine. 0 Comments

Ran across a couple of posts that re-confirmed in my mind that there have to be better ways than wine scores to wade through the sea of wines and make a selection. Dr. Vino was tasting with a critic who uses the numerical system in his work, because it’s required, but revealed that he thinks “it’s stupid” because it gives a false appearance of objectivity.

And then Beau in Basic Juice described the changing flavors of an inexpensive Spanish wine he tasted a few minutes after opening it and at different time intervals up to about an hour. His notes evolved considerably along with the wine in that hour. If a $10.00 bottle shows that kind of evolution, imagine what something with more complexity might do!!! I can’t be certain, but I imagine that tasting panels such as those at the Wine Spectator don’t have the luxury of spending that kind of time with the wine. Their site explains that “Each flight may consist of 20 to 30 wines, and no more than two flights are tasted by a taster each day.”

At a seminar by Karen MacNeil, she stated unequivocally that she doesn’t think we give the wine a chance if we don’t spend a couple of hours with it. That’s a great assignment for those of us who “rate” wines over dinner with friends. For those in the business of cranking out wine ratings on a frequent basis this isn’t so practical.

And, of course there was Gary on Wine Library TV, tasting through and talking about the vast gulf separating the Wine Enthusiast and the Wine Spectator ratings of 4 different wines and offering his own opinion. Who are we supposed to believe?

One of my favorite ways to evaluate from way back (having been spoiled by the insider discounts):

I’d pay full retail for it: truly yummy stuff! The ultimate accolade.
I’d buy it at inter-winery price or a trade discount: pretty good stuff.
I’d drink it if someone gave it to me: clean, OK wine; nothin’ to write home about.
If someone gave it to me, I’d give it away: speaks for itself, and not a very generous impulse.

But would you agree with me, having tasted the same wines?

Numerical ratings:
Snappy way to make a decision? Definitely. Genuinely helpful? Guess the jury’s out.

Calories, Schmalories

December 29, 2006 in Wine and Wine Education. 0 Comments

So, of course we’re all suffering through the usual barrage of fitness ads and diet program come-ons that arrive with the new year. We know in our hearts that this is the year we’re going to get serious about exercising, watch what we eat (and drink!) and lose those extra pounds. Yeah, right…

Inevitably, we ended up talking about this stuff at family gatherings over the holidays. And then we got to talking about the ever-increasing alcohols in wine when they asked me what I’d been writing about at work lately (see post called “Are High Alcohols a Trend?”). My clan was completely oblivious to the trend. I wondered aloud if there’s a connection between higher alcohols and weight gain. You see, over the last several years, little by little, I’ve put on a few pounds that I can’t seem to shake. My eating habits haven’t changed and, if anything, I get more exercise now than ever. Mom says I’m probably just getting old (Thanks, Mom!).

So now, it’s stuck in my craw and I’ve got to find out how much the calories increase as the alcohol rises. Most sites just tell you that a 4-ounce glass of wine has about 80 calories, but they don’t account for the variability of the alcohol. Then, as I became increasingly obsessed, I ran across this nifty formula from wineintro.com: Multiply 1.6 x the percentage of alcohol x the number of ounces.

A few strokes on the calculator later I’ve learned that if you drank a 4-ounce glass of Napa Valley Zinfandel that was made in the ’70s and was probably about 12% alcohol it had 77 calories. If you drink a 2004 Zinfandel that’s maybe around 15 or 16% it has around 100 calories. If you share a bottle of this Zinfandel with your significant other on a daily basis you’re taking in 80 calories more today than you were in the 70s.

woman upset on scale So, unless you’re exercising 80 calories-worth more than you were back in the day, you may be putting on weight as a result. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, if you eat 100 more food calories a day than you burn, you’ll gain about 1 pound in a month. 12 pounds a year? !!?� !*%%#!!! At least that hasn’t happened (yet!)

One of the many reasons I love my sister is that, along with a lot of other people, she thinks wine isn’t fattening (YES!) This completely charming group of people say that cutting wine from the diet never results in weight loss for them. Oh, how I want to believe! This additional information, from wineintro is somewhat encouraging: “Unlike most foods, alcohol is processed by your liver. What the liver does is take in the alcohol and convert it to acetate… And your body enjoys burning acetate as a fuel source. So while this acetate won’t make you fat, your body is now choosing to burn that acetate instead of burning the fat you already have in your system.” Hmmm… Kinda sounds like it all comes out in the wash.

I see 3 very simple options:

#1: Drink less wine (hmphh!)

#2: According to caloriecontrol.org, all I have to do to offset the extra 80 calories is to take a brisk walk for 15 minutes. Now THAT’S do-able!

#3: Believe my husband when he says he likes the extra curves. ;-)

I think I’ll go with door #3. How about you? Happy New Year!!!

Nature or Nurture?

December 17, 2006 in Observations, Wine and Winemaking. 0 Comments

Of course, there’s been enough written about terroir to overload a landfill and permanently blur the vision. Soil, climate and whatever else you choose to include in your personal definition of terroir are obviously going to be the single biggest influence on the wine’s character and quality.

Snob

But, as we know very well, you can give a winemaker great fruit and he can still manage to produce a stunningly offensive bottle of wine. The winemaker is a V.V.I.I.P.P. in the process.

Since Champagne and sparkling wine are my favorite weaknesses (see Napa Valley Wine Radio, episode 31), I was fascinated by this article by Jon Bonne in the San Francisco Chronicle. He concludes that for sparkling wine, technique trumps terroir. My limited experience makes me tend to agree. I remember back in the 80s, when domestic sparkling wine was really starting to take hold, my wine buddies and I would hold blind tastings as frequently as our pocketbooks would allow. Part of the routine was to guess if the wine was California or French. Pas de probleme! These tastings always made an inexperienced taster like me feel like a genius! The California wines always seemed sweeter, simpler and fruitier than Champagne and were ridiculously easy to identify.

Lots has happened since then and there are some wonderful California-style sparklers that aren’t so simple now. They’re absolutely lovely, and identifiably not Champagne. But there are some real ringers out there too. My favorite domestic bubbly is Roederer Anderson Valley, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought it’s French when it’s served blind, especially the L’Ermitage. A few other local bubblies have tripped me up too.

Sparkling Wine

Last year I was fortunate to attend a Champagne/sparkling wine seminar with Karen MacNeil, and part of our experience was a blind tasting in which we ranked the wines most to least favorite and with the “name the origin” game thrown in too. Out of six wines, my 1 and 2 rankings were Roederer Brut Premier Champagne and Roederer Anderson Valley Brut. I though they were both Champagne. I think the terroir for me, in this case, is Roederer! But, I have to say that most of the group thought the Anderson Valley was Champers too. Somehow Roederer has figured out how to get that toasty, biscuit-like nose and what Ms. MacNeil refers to as an enticing “contrapuntal tension” between the creamy richness and the bracing acidity from two very different “terroirs”.

I don’t know if our cheeks were a little warm and pink from the wine or from our embarrassment (it’s so hard to spit Champagne!), but we managed to botch the identity of a few other wines, too, which says something about how techniques have evolved here in California in the last few decades. You may or may not feel that the growing similarity between Champagne and local bubblies is a good thing, but since I can often get the Anderson Valley Brut on sale at Safeway for $16.99 vs. $40.00 for the Brut Premier, I’m grateful for these advances in technique!

When Colleen, our proprietor, and I were in Provence awhile back (see post called Culinary Getaways a la Provencal) one of the winery owners we met commented that he thinks too much emphasis is placed on terroir and not enough credit is given to the winemaker. He went on to regale us with a story about how a group of Master Sommeliers held a tasting of Merlot from several continents with a common denominator of Michel Rolland, the famous wine consultant, as the consulting winemaker (my apologies to those who’ve heard me tell this story before). These highly experienced tasters got it all wrong. They thought the Chilean wine was Bordeaux and the Italian wine was from Napa Valley. Their terroir was Rolland.

Sparkling Wine Rack

Maybe some styles of wine are more about technique than others. Sparkling wine has sooooo many steps compared to still wine production, I don’t understand why anyone makes it (but I’m infinitely grateful they do!). Also, the grapes are significantly less mature at harvest, so perhaps some sense of terroir is lost there too. But that doesn’t explain the Rolland story above. Guess we’ll have to keep drinking and thinking! Cheers!

Popping Sparkling Cork

Bottling Day at Goosecross!

December 12, 2006 in Wine, Wine Education and Winemaking. 0 Comments

So often when folks come for a tour, they wonder where we’re hiding the bottling line.

Well, it’s hidden in a truck that comes for a visit from time to time. Like so many wineries of our size, we don’t have a bottling line. This is a side of winemaking you might not think about unless you’re in the biz, but wineries spawn lots of related industries and one of them is mobile bottling.

The first time I saw it in action I was completely amazed. How do they do that? A huge truck backs up onto your property, they open the back doors, and inside it looks just like the inside of a winery. Beautiful stainless-steel equipment: filler, corker, labeler, it’s all there. Ryan-McGee has their crew, we have ours, and we team up to get the job done. Since bottling is their sole enterprise, the handful of companies who offer this service in the U.S. generally do a top notch job. Like many things wine, this concept was adopted from the Europeans and has been going on here since 1978.

Why?? Bottling equipment is extremely costly and it just doesn’t make sense for a company like ours, which makes about 9000 cases of wine a year, to dedicate the space or invest in equipment we’d only use maybe 5 days out of the whole year. But, even large wineries sometimes get some help from mobile bottlers when they experiment with a new format, for instance going to screw caps for the first time. It would cost tens of thousands of dollars to add that component to the existing bottling line, so some of them choose to call the mobile bottlers instead.

This is an exciting day for us because we’re bottling the first of our wines from the 2006 harvest. We’re not quite as quick as Beaujolais Nouveau, but we make 3 white wines, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc, that taste best to us without the influence of oak. Consequently, we bottle them now, give them several weeks time to recover from “bottle shock” and they’ll be in your hands by some time in January. Perfect timing. These lively, vibrant wines are meant to be consumed in their youth, so down the hatch and enjoy!

Are We All A Bunch Of Snobs?

November 28, 2006 in Rants, Wine and Wine Business. 0 Comments

I was skimming here and there and found this interesting post in “Life’s a Picnic”. Very enjoyable reading, but what really got my attention was Greg’s reluctance to visit a winery because he was convinced that the people would be “too serious and snobby.” And this from a foodie, if you take a look at his posts.

Snob

ARGHH!!!! Mortally wounded! After all these years in winery hospitality, at wineries big and small, reading that we’re so perceived makes me break out in a cold sweat. I have invested considerable effort in dispelling this “serious and snobby” thing over more years than I care to admit and, when I was in a position to influence others, I coached them to be unfailingly kind, helpful, informative and, most importantly, FUN! Wine is about a lot of things, but in the end it’s about fun, isn’t it?

Anyway, he was going, with some trepidation, to meet the winemaker at Periscope Cellars in Emeryville, CA. He observed that “The surroundings are certainly not like the palatial settings of the North Counties, more like a big old military bunker…”

And he was delighted to find out that the Winemaker was actually fun to be with. “While having serious credentials and experience he is far from snobby. Brian seems part guy next door, part artist and part mad scientist. He is generous to a fault with his time and seems extremely happy to be doing his wine thing.”

You know, that description fits a whole lot of winemakers I’ve known. I think what people forget when they see all the fancy architecture is that we’re still an agriculturally-based business, and that the work is physical! Sure, there are ivory-tower winemakers and high-flying consultants, but they’re much more the exception than the rule. Most of us in the wine industry are just ordinary people who choose to make our living in wine because we love it.

For those of you who like wine but believe as Greg does, I hope you’ll reconsider and hit the wine trail again. I’ll acknowledge that wine brings out the worst in some people, and those are the folks you want to avoid. And yes, you can find very formal situations with intimidating tasting rooms and astronomical tasting fees, but if you investigate a little, you can also find little places like ours that are off the beaten track. You may not find a grand villa, but you will find that lots of us are genuinely glad to see you, show you a good time and answer your questions without a hint of pretense. Plus, we’ll pour some seriously-fine wine (without taking it too seriously).

It may mean getting off the main highways and onto the sideroads or up in the hills, but that just makes an ordinary outing more like an adventure. COME ON DOWN!

Kermit Lynch, Wine Merchant

November 21, 2006 in Selling Wine, Wine and Wine Business. 0 Comments

As kind of a coda to my last posting, “Alternatives to Wine Ratings” in which I suggested you find a retailer you trust, I have to give a plug to one of my very favorite wine merchants, and he’s one I’ve actually never met.

Nouveau Beaujolais

Kermit Lynch has to be the best wine writer on the planet. Every month when his newsletter arrives, he makes me want to buy out his entire inventory. He even has me lusting after wines of a type I don’t generally care for because he describes them so vividly, and with genuine affection. And that helps me to become that more adventurous, independent consumer that I’m always talking about.

It takes more than great writing to create a loyal customer. Over the years, I’ve found that his descriptions, which are not accompanied by numerical ratings, are pretty darned close to what I experience once I pop the cork. He’s not sitting at his desk in Berkeley, ordering out of a catalogue. He and his staff hand-select the wines and buy them directly from the producers, so the quality of the wines is reliable. It was interesting that when Colleen, our proprietor, and I were in Provence and Chateauneuf-du-Pape last month (see post titled “Culinary Getaways a la Provencal ” the name Kermit Lynch was well known, and in one case, a producer asked if I knew how to get his attention. Who, me???

And there’s the bummer. Provence is his springboard for buying wines from all over France, with an occasional sprinkling of Italian wines. I prefer to buy local most of the time, but I can’t resist placing an occasional order with Kermit Lynch. I rationalize by reminding myself that tasting wines from outside my own back yard is important to my work.

Anyway, if for no other reason than a great read, you should subscribe to his newsletter. I tell ya, if I won the lottery, he’d have to buy another truck just to keep up with my deliveries!