“There’s no air conditioning, and I am sweating!” The affable Luigi Collavini from Eugenio Collavini says that he’s uncomfortable in his family’s warm wine offices during our online tasting back in August; but you wouldn’t notice it on our Zoom call. Luigi is animated, and clearly eager to share his family’s story (and wines). One…
Category: elegant wines
“Bigger Than Any One Chapter” (Tasting Twenty Years of Mayacamas Cabernet)
“It’s bigger than any one chapter; if we do it well, the chatter will be about our wines being part of the lineage.” Mayacamas winemaker Braiden Albrecht talks about the history of his employer (famously founded in 1889) with a kind of detached reverence. When we tasted three vintages of Mayacamas Cabernet Sauvignon spanning twenty…
Wine, Art, Compost, and Apprenticeship, Not Necessarily in That Order (Donum Estate 2022 Releases)
I’ve had only fleeting encounters with Carneros stalwart Donum’s excellent wines over the years. So when I was invited to taste with Donum‘s current winemaker Dan Fishman in the late summer (of 2024), I jumped at that chance [full disclosure: their current CFO is a friend of mine]. Founded in 2001 and known nearly as…
Peaks and… More Peaks (Highlights from VinoVIP Cortina 2024, Part 2)
Welcome to Part 2 of the highlights from my media jaunt to VinoVIP 2024, held in Italy’s rather dramatic (landscape-wise, anyway) locale of Cortina. For more background on the event, head over to Part 1. The main draw of VinoVIP is the grand tasting, held at Rifugio Faloria. This lodge is situated pretty much perfectly…