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HiYa! If you're new here, you may want to Sign Up to get all the latest wine coolness delivered to your virtual doorstep. I've also got short, easily-digestible mini wine reviews and some educational, entertaining wine vids. If you're looking to up your wine tasting IQ, check out my book How to Taste Like a Wine Geek: A practical guide to tasting, enjoying, and learning about the world's greatest beverage. Cheers!

For the latter part of this week, I’ll be in (stay classy) San Diego (which of course in German means “a whale’s vagina”), acting as one of the judges in the 2013 Critics Challenge competition (an opportunity at which I jumped, as the rest of the stellar judging cast is, in the words of Ron Burgundy’s deep-timbered narrator, “the ballz!”).

Given my bordering-on-crazy travel schedule this month (and based on the huge response to our last giveaway here on 1WD), I’m opting for another giveaway to assuage your genetic psychological need to respond to the new and different.

This week, I’m teaming up with Dead Bolt Wine to offer a $100 gift card to StubHub.com (cash value: $100… duh…), so that (if you win) you can get your Summer concert fix on!

Part of Dead Bolt’s well-positioned marketing focus is the idea of pushing the envelope in iconoclastic ways, which is a bit of a recurring theme in the features here on 1WD. Dead Bolt have also been heavy into the independent music scene this year – another topic quite close to my ticker. So for this giveaway, here’s how it’s gonna go down:

• Leave a comment on this post and let us know who in the wine world you most admire for going against the grain (there’s an oak-aging/anti-oak-aging joke in there somewhere).
• In one week, on June 25, 201 at 8PM ET, I will randomly select a winner from the commenters, who will receive the $100 gift card to StubHub.com.

To get you in the Summer concert going mood, I’m including an embarrassingly staged photo of me from my band’s recent WSTW FM radio appearance, and a clip from that show in which we performed a wine-related tune live on the air (for more on that song, titled Wine Kissing Days, check out the video premier from 2011). You might like it, in which case you’ll be primed for both wine drinking and Summer concerts, or hate it, in which case if you win you’ll be able to go see some other act that’s actually good!

In any case, at least it gives you some background music while you’re writing your comment…

Wine Kissing Days: The Steve Liberace Band

Cheers – and good luck!

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!

• 11 Bruno Giacosa Dolcetto D'Alba (Dolcetto D'Alba): Speaking in thick Italian accent, explaining how berry jam's supposed to be made. $25 B >>find this wine<<
• 11 Bruno Giacosa Roero Arneis (Roero): In short, the rocks rock with totally rocking rockstar rockability. Not sure for how long tho. $27 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 11 Domaines Schlumberger Pinot Blanc Les Princes Abbes (Alsace): Well, how about them apples? All of the richness & none of the fat! $17 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 11 Klipfel Riesling Cuvee Particuliere (Alsace): For some, the past is a particularly fruity but strange – & very astringent – place. $14 B- >>find this wine<<
• 10 Emeritus William Wesley Pinot Noir (Sonoma Coast): Capable of winning an arm wrestling match, but would rather give you a backrub. $65 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 12 Miraval Rose (Cotes de Provence): Like Brangelina, there's a serious streak under its entertaining, easy-on-the-senses flamboyance $23 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 09 Monteverro Tinata (Maremma): Mostly claws, sinew & roars now, time ought to get it rolling over, purring & looking for a tummy rub $95 A- >>find this wine<<
• 09 Monteverro Terra di Monteverro (Maremma): Putting the super in Super Tuscan, & a Super Tuscan into your hoity toity supper action. $75 A- >>find this wine<<
• 09 Monteverro Toscana (Maremma): Grit, grip, & a ton of dried herbs that won't quit; patience might be rewarded with smoother edges. $90 A- >>find this wine<<
• 09 Monteverro Chardonnay (Maremma): Big, brash, but also beautiful; a lot of volume, no doubt, but not without its compelling dialog. $85 A- >>find this wine<<

Last month, I was one of the International judges in the 2013 Wines of Portugal Challenge, an annual event that was recently opened up to include wine-type-folks from outside of Portugal in the judging pool.

The results of that competition have just been published, and as their guest (okay, okay, and to make up a bit for hammering them about our butt-numbing trip to the Dão), I thought I’d share the results of the competition with you. Only, it will be 1WD style, so prepare for the opinionated and somewhat freakish.

I’m happy to report that the competition was both fun and well-run, apart from having to reuse stemware (and the tendency of some of my amiable panel-mates to fall into native Portuguese when discussing the results of each wine, which meant that in some cases I only understood that they were arguing – or agreeing – about a wine’s relative merits). I’m not so happy to report that the Portuguese still seem hell-bent on pushing Touriga Nacional as their flagship red wine grape, despite the fairly well-accepted notions that a) the TN wines, while potentially excellent and long-lived, are acquired tastes and are largely inferior to their blended counterparts, and b) Dão and Douro are a lot easier to pronounce for most English-speakers. Just sayin’.

Since many of you have no visibility into how these competitions work, I should share that no two wine competitions are run identically (at least not in my growing experience with them), and in this case our panel consisted of a couple of international judges (duh), and mostly folks from the Portuguese wine industry (Port, Madeira, etc.), headed up by a Portuguese winemaker as our panel chief (charged with keeping us all in line).

We tasted all of the wines blind, and then inputted our opinions electronically into a PC via drop-down boxes for various categories of evaluation (one of which, confusingly, was typicity, even though we tasted blind and weren’t told what we were evaluating). The drop-down choices translated in the system as numeric scores, which then translated into a medal (gold, silver, bronze, or no award).

I hated this system…

Read the rest of this stuff »

Aaaaannnnd… Episode #5 of The Punch Down is now in the books!

The replay of our controversial chat with iconoclastic importer/author/word-magician/documentary-maker/Riesling-freak Terry Theise is below for your viewing pleasure. Terry expresses his love for the Hosemaster of Wine, gets political on Champagne, and sets on straight on why Riesling is, in fact, the world’s greatest wine grapes (see, people, I told you…). Also, I end up trying the Pitt-Jolie rosé (don’t judge me…). If you are even remotely geeky about wine, this episode is going to get your blood flowing, trust me. Enjoy!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Leading Between the Vines
• Reading Between the Wines
• Miraval Rosé (yes, that Miraval, the Brangelina wine that sold out in less than five hours)

Cheers!