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…
Category: kick-ass wines
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…
Wine in the Time of Coronavirus, Part 7 (In Which I Award An A+ to TWO Wines… WHAT?!?)
Usually, the 1WD wine sample pool is, as my daughter likes to describe my cooking, “adequate.” What I mean is, most of the wine samples that I receive are pretty good, if not get-you-all-diddy-like exciting; occasionally I get a sample that’s an utter dud, and occasionally I pop open a sample that’s delightfully surprising. Rarely,…
