Add yet another locale to the list of gorgeous places that I’m supposed to be visiting, but the opportunity for which has been heinously denied to me due to the USA’s botched response to the current pandemic: Fort Ross Vineyard on the Sonoma Coast. My experience with FRV, as has been the new normal lately,…
Category: kick-ass wines
Wine in the Time of Coronavirus, Part 9 (Tenuta Sette Cieli Bolgheri Recent Releases)
On the border of Bolgheri, within sight of the legendary Sassicaia and equally-legendary Ornellaia, nestled in Tuscany’s gorgeous and golden-lit rolling hills, protected by surrounding forests, sits the former horse ranch and now premium wine producer Tenuta Sette Cieli. I know that those rolling Sette Cieli hills are gorgeous because I’ve seen them. Over Zoom…
Alentejo Postcard, Part 4 (or “The Cake Doesn’t Need Icing” – Tasting Cortes de Cima)
When you visit Alentejo’s Cortes de Cima (as I did late in 2019 on a media jaunt), you realize that their geese are more than just “a loud alarm system” (as Winemaking Director Hamilton Reis put it). Those geese also eat vineyard pests, like slugs and snails. That’s not the only traditional thing that Cortes…
Wine in the Time of Coronavirus, Part 8 (Decoster Bordeaux 2016 Releases)
“It was just, like, a dream.” Thibaut Decoster and wife Magali (a Bordeaux native) knew basically nothing about farming and winemaking. No prior experience working the land. No family in the industry. So naturally they now own four wineries across twenty-eight hectares of vineyards in Bordeaux. “My dream was to be a farmer,” Thibaut Decoster…
