I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.
They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), and are presented links to help you find them, so that you can try them out for yourself. Cheers!
A quick note today to let you know that my latest piece for the Napa Valley Wine Academy has been published, this time focusing on Furmint (you can check out other NVWA articles here).
The once-kingly-then-humble-and-now-up-and-coming Hungarian Furmint grape variety has had a wild ride the past few years. While it seems like only yesterday that I found myself the temporary face of dry Furmint’s presence in the wily U.S. market, that little video adventure took place about five years ago, when most Stateside wine nerds had little-to-no contact with the zesty, complex wines that grape was capable of offering.
It’s been nice to see that Furmint gained a bit of traction, and that it continues to do fairly well, at least in terms of being on the taste-maker radar, gaining media coverage, and garnering wine competition awards. All of which are a long time in coming, and probably long overdue.
Anyway, if you want a quick primer on the history of one of my fave varieties (along with recommended producers to check out if you get thirsty), well, you know where to go.
I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.
They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), and are presented links to help you find them, so that you can try them out for yourself. Cheers!
2016 Henschke Henry’s Seven (Barossa): Violets, leather, smoke, blackberries, black cherries… but then, I guess we should expect that a lot can get packed into something this big and lovely… $45 A-
Back in May (I know, I know…), I was a media guest for the 2019 Austrian Wine Summit, during which I was lucky enough to participate in a tour “along the Danube,” visiting and tasting through Austria’s classic wine producing regions.
It was pretty much as awesome as that sentence makes it sound.
Even so, I’ve (obviously over-)hesitated to jump into the coverage of that jaunt, mostly because such media group travels rarely lend themselves to overt story-lines. You visit; you taste; you all scramble to take pictures and find coffee; you eat; you drink; you move on to the next visit.
You also learn; in some cases, quite a lot, even if the stories being told lack the obvious dramatic flair of conflict. And so I think for our humble little coverage of Austria here, the stories will be the regions and wines themselves; many of which you almost certainly won’t have tried, because many lack appropriate representation in the USA (sorry!).
Our first stop: tasting at one of Austria’s oldest wine estates, Freigut Thallern, in Thermenregion. Bordering Vienna and the Wienerwald woodlands, where a mere two thousand or so hectares of vineyards are divided into a whopping forty-two different community villages, Thermenregion’s average plots are understandably small – and the average yields even smaller (in fact, the lowest in all of Austria). You’ll find a thermal fault and plenty of thermal springs here, but interestingly no volcanic soils. Another interesting tidbit: Thermenregion’s white wines (which dominate in the region’s north), tend to see a bit of skin contact during vinification, an historical remnant used to help preserve the wines for travel. Speaking of the wines…
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