When I visited venerable Alsatian wine icon Hugel on a media jaunt earlier this year (2017), they were nary a year removed from the family tragedy of Etienne Hugel’s untimely death, and their CEO had left the company the week prior to my visit. When I mentioned to 13th-generation family member Marc-André Hugel that many…
Category: crowd pleaser wines
Cheap Tricks (Domaines Schlumberger Recent Releases)
“We are very cheap for a Grand Cru!” It could be said that Domaines Schlumberger‘s Thomas Schlumberger doesn’t fully understand the negative connotations of the word “cheap” in the English language. I write that because, as he told me the above quote during a media visit to the Guebwiller property that has been in his…
Spit Shine (Domaine Marcel Deiss Recent Releases)
Jean-Michel Deiss likes to talk spit. That his family, winegrowers since 1744, are established as the Alsatian version of winemaking royalty probably helps him to get away with it. “Wine today is an industrial project,” he told me (through interpretation) during a media tour visit to Domaine Marcel Deiss‘ Bergheim winery. “But great wine is…
The People’s Republic (Highlights From “Authentic Alentejo”)
In the grand scheme of the wine world, Portugal appears to be the county that stands tall, despite its relatively small size (about 575 miles long, and just under 140 miles wide). In Napoleonic-complex fashion, it makes up for its stature in other ways; Portugal is in the top ten worldwide in vineyard acreage, per…