image: Fix.com

Attention, peeps!

My latest entry for Fix.com is now live; this time, we’re providing an overview of some of the world’s more exciting sparkling wine regions, titled Bubbling Over. See what they did there? Ok, I’ll shut up now.

Once again, the Fix.com crew’s stellar graphics talents are on full display, making the most (and then some!) of my modest attempt at the prose. The full info-graphic is embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

Most of these bubbly regions will be familiar to you geeks, though I think there’s one in there that might come as a slight surprise even to you fabulous wine nerds. Enjoy!

Cheers!

Read the rest of this stuff »

image: wine.answers.com

A bit on the early side, but what the hell, we’re all drinking so it’s all good, right? Right?!? C’mon, don’t tell me I’m the only one of you tasting at 8AM ET (hell, some of you West Coasties might still be up drinking from last night as you read this…)!

Anyway…

Herewith you will find the roundup of this month’s articles from my Wine.Answers.com gig. Much edu-tainment, and, hopefully, some review-related insights await you:

Wine Product Review: Sommelier’s Preference Bordeaux 1855 Classique Wine Aerator

For those of you who don’t already own a Vinturi, there’s this little number, similar in appearance (and in sound) but quite different in terms of internal design, and about as effective. Apparently, we did, in fact, need yet another entrant into this crowded accessory market.

Wine Product Review: Sip & Save Vacuum Wine Pump

Vacuum wine pump style preservation systems either suck air, or just plain suck, depending on to whom you speak in the wine loving company that you keep. I take a middle-ground view here, in that I think they have their place in the preservation of simpler wines. If you fall on the “they’re not so bad” side of the debate, you’d be hard pressed to find a higher quality version than the Sip & Save.

 Wine Book Review: “Wine To Water” by Doc Hendley

Ok, technically this is far from a wine book. In fact, it has almost nothing to do with wine in the grand scheme of the memoir that Wine to Water founder Doc Hendley has spun. BUT… “Wine to Water” is a terse, friendly, and moving yarn of a tale, and it just might get you rethinking your jaded, wine-soaked stance that one person cannot really make a difference in this world.

Three Things You Didn’t Know About South African Wine Country

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, you already knew all of this stuff. Including the production figures. Because you are a bad-ass of the highest vinous order. Whatever…

Cheers!

There have been some behind-the-scenes changes going on here at 1WD HQ. The more observant among you will notice that I finally ditched the comment engines altogether and have declared that war officially over, it having ended in my inglorious defeat. We’ll be sticking to some enhanced WordPress comments from here on out.

1WD also has a new home, courtesy of WPPronto.com, with whom so far things have been going swimmingly. I’ve tweaked some other technical hosting items here and there; just enough to get me in trouble.

Anyway, today’s update is supposed to be about how this month, for the Wine.Answers.com gig, I decided to go with a double-shot of two themes. So let’s stop messin’ around and get to it, already. Those themes are —

1) The love-it-or-loathe-it “three things…” trivia (primarily because I am a nerd), and

2) Wine book reviews (primarily because I am getting sick of looking at the ever-increasing piles of yet-to-be-reviewed sample books on my office floor).

And so, linked for your reading edu-tainment:

Three Things that You Didn’t Know about Wine Tasting – Seriously, you need to respect the epithelium, people. I mean it. Get on it, your schnoz has power!

Three Things that You Didn’t Know about Burgundy – Yes, I mean besides the incredibly-priced rarities. Anyway, you’ll be able to impress your wine-snob friends with a few of these tidbits, I’ll wager.

Wine Book Review: “Wine and Climate Change” by L.J. Johnson-Bell – “Wine and Climate Change” is a bit of a schizophrenic read (in terms of tone), but it will likely have wine geeks fascinated anyway by its well-researched and well-argued opinions (not to mention the “what-if” scenarios) about how global warming is and will f*ck-up the wine world as we currently know it.

Wine Book Review: “Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and other Alcoholic Beverages” by Patrick McGovern – Call me a homer for a wine history tome written by a fellow PA guy, but nobody covers wine’s distant past like McGovern, and “Uncorking the Past” is at turns witty, insightful, and almost brilliant.

Cheers!

While I love Thanksgiving (eating, football, family time), if it weren’t for my daughter, I would loathe the Christmas season. Shopping, pressure, tinsel, pressure, and freezing temperatures? And pressure? Sorry, that just doesn’t sound jolly to me.

All the more reason to drown out the din of the real world with the alcohol content of fine wine, I suppose!

Anyway, I’m late on this (I would blame holiday shopping, but we both know I do that shizz online in my pajama pants), but I present below the 2014 November Wine.Answers.com article roundup for your reading pleasure:

• An Introduction to Organic Wine (with Bonterra Vineyard Director David Koball): From a recent trip to Sonoma, I returned with a lot of new knowledge about organic grape-growing and winemaking from Bonterra, who have been doing that stuff for just about as long and at just about as large a scale as anyone in the U.S. The added bonus is that their vineyard director is opinionated, which made for an entertaining and informative interview.
• Three Things You Didn’t Know About Lodi Wine Country: One of the benefits of attending tastings of wines from historic Lodi vineyards is that you also get access to the people who know those regions best, which for me translated into a collection of what I thought were fascinating tidbits about the region (but you’re a badass, and already knew all of the trivia in that article, right?).
• Wine Book Review: “Barolo and Barbaresco” by Kerin O’Keefe: O’Keefe has been on a tear lately on the Italian wine region overview book front, and “Barolo and Barbaresco” is a fine addition to her lineup (and are regions that were probably overdue for another overview treatment), if you can handle her terse writing style.
• Finally, in a significant departure for me in terms of the types of wine accessories I try out, I gave the wine-themed jewelry from Olive & Poppy a spin. You can check out their high-quality, relatively-pricey, and non-kitschy wares at oliveandpoppy.com.

Cheers!