So, like, what is this stuff, anyway?
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 with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available wines. Below is a wrap-up of those twitter wine reviews from the past week (click here for the skinny on how to read them), along with links to help you find these wines, so that you can try them for yourself. Cheers!

• 09 Garbole Hatteso Amarone della Valpolicella Riserva (Valpolicella): As full-throttle/intense a N. Italian as you're likely to meet. $NA A- >>find this wine<<
• 13 Benanti Rovittello Etna Rosso (Sicily): Pure, elegant, and rather acerbic at the notion that you'd dare disturb its current repose $45 A- >>find this wine<<
• 15 Benanti Etna Rosso (Sicily): Celebrating its twentieth vintage with vivacity, grace, and an inimitable sense of Italian style. $23 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 15 Benanti Etna Bianco (Sicily): Flint, fresh flowers, formidable amounts of perfume, & maybe more freshness than you can handle. $23 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 10 Bodega Pirineos Senorio De Lazan Reserva (Somontano): Think tart red plums, wrapped in tobacco leaf & planted in potting soil. $NA B+ >>find this wine<<
• 16 Bodega Pirineos Barbadillo Principio Moristel (Somontano): Rare sighting of a dark, brambly, lively, & pithy Somontano native. $NA B+ >>find this wine<<
• 16 Bodega Pirineos Rosado Palido (Somontano): Tempranillo and Cab Sauv making for pretty, poised, & on-point dancing partners. $NA B+ >>find this wine<<
• 16 Bodega Pirineos Blanco (Somontano): A veritable unicorn among kitchen sink style blends; much greater than the sum of its parts. $NA B+ >>find this wine<<
• 16 Chappellet Signature Chenin Blanc (Napa Valley): those of you who love tropical fruits will want to sign up, with all speed. $32 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 13 Chappellet Pritchard Hill Estate Vineyard Cabernet Franc (Napa Valley): Almost an embarrassment of silky, dark, succulent riches. $80 A- >>find this wine<<

What do you do when your identity, your story, and even your best efforts are only seen through the contextual lens of your more famous cousins?

Besides developing an inferiority complex, I mean? After all, major characters in Greek tragedies were written with this stuff in mind; and it happens to be the defining lucha of Northern Spain’s Somontano wine region. That’s not the entire Somontano story, of course; as it happens, the region just might be the home of your next favorite Garnacha or Cabernet. While the DO is probably more familiar to WSET students than to American consumers, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot have been grown in Somontano for over one hundred and twenty years.

Viñas del Vero’s old hillside vines

Somontano is a place that’s relatively high on quality fine wine and winemaking prowess, but low on the ohhhhh-producing items (think indigenous grapes, or trendy stylistic techniques) that make for easy feature article material in the wine trade. The area largely produces wines from international varieties, in some cases from vines with significant age on them, done up in styles that are clean, fresh, and modern enough to all but dilute any defining sense of place.

But a sense of place does exist in Somontano, albeit courtesy of more famous wine regions. When the phylloxera epidemic spread throughout France, Somontano’s proximity and favorable climate made it an attractive spot for planting French vitis vinifera; which was later followed by declining demand and the abandonment of vineyard sites that were promising but difficult to farm. Sites like Viñas del Vero‘s “rediscovered” high-elevation plantings.

Situated at the northeastern slopes of the Somontano DO, along the edges of the European plate, these vineyards had dwindled down to 5 hectares by the time that Viñas del Vero rescued them (they’re now up to about 55 hectares). The oldest of the field-blended vines along those 800-meter-high, calcareous hills are in excess of 100 years in age. As Viñas del Vero’s vineyard manager José María Ayuso put it (during a media tour of the region), “you can get maybe one bottle per vine” from those old souls…

Read the rest of this stuff »

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway?
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 with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available wines. Below is a wrap-up of those twitter wine reviews from the past week (click here for the skinny on how to read them), along with links to help you find these wines, so that you can try them for yourself. Cheers!

• 15 Nicolas Jay Pinot Noir (Willamette Valley): Planting violets in potting soil, eating snacks of ripe black cherries & smoked meat. $65 A- >>find this wine<<
• NV Gloria Ferrer Brut Rose (Carneros): Finely grained, full of finesse, and probably fabulous with just about any Asian fare. $28 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 14 Cadaretta Windthrow (Columbia Valley): Oak haters gonna hate, but in a few years even they will have love for this brawny SMG. $50 A- >>find this wine<<
• 14 McCay Cellars Lodi Native Lot 13 The Estate Vineyard Zinfandel (Mokelumne River): It's soul is blackberry, its spicy heart is pure $35 A- >>find this wine<<
• 16 Zocker Paragon Vineyard Gruner Veltliner (Edna Valley): It's not just a game, Zocker! It's a seriously fruity, zesty enterprise! $18 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 16 Concha y Toro Terrunyo Los Boldos Vineyard Block 5 Sauvignon Blanc (Casablanca Valley): The grass is greener – & prettier – here. $27 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 14 Odfjell Orzada Carignan (Maule Valley): Well-weathered vines are setting a course for licorice shores and truffle-laden lands. $22 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 16 Nobilo Icon Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough): The spice is strong with this one. Very, very, *very* strong. Bring Mexican food. $22 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 15 Schild Estate Shiraz (Barossa Valley): Look at this overachiever go; just enough added depth to make you give it a double-take. $20 B+ >>find this wine<<
• NV Le Grand Courtage Grand Cuvee Brut Rose (France): Lofty label titles, but this is all basically simple, down-to-earth perkiness. $18 B >>find this wine<<

Earlier this week, I was quoted by author, veteran wine competition judge, and personal friend Michael Cervin on his big, Boozehoundz. In that article, Michael included my now-exceedingly-repetitive advice on wine PR, along with much more helpful words from others far more versed in the wine PR field, regarding the value of public relations in helping wine brands to get their message out to their perspective customers/fans/consumers/etc.

Michael’s article has immensely insightful information on the how and why of communicating wine brands messages; what that article doesn’t discuss is how few wine brands have actually crafted a viable message in the first place, and therefore aren’t even in a position to use the helpful information therein.

I have become more acutely aware of this issue during 2016 and 2017, specifically and most vicerally during my travels to regional wine events and subsequent tours of those wine areas. It’s astounding how few of those regions have crafted anything close to resembling a message tailored to the markets that they wish to penetrate. In most cases, they don’t seem to have actually identified the specific markets to which they’d deliver a message if they even had one.

In more than one instance this year, I’ve attended regional panel discussions targeted to the press in which representatives from across the silos of those wine regions – farming, production, oversight, marketing – not only do not have a message about their region to pass on to the press, but use the platform to either engage in internecine arguments, or to ask people like me “what do YOU think our message should be?…”

Read the rest of this stuff »