“We want to have elegance be the main focus of our wines. The biggest fear for me is over-extraction.” Tenuta Argentiera winemaker Nicolò Carrara is right to be a little afraid. He is dealing with ripening and fermenting grapes in Tuscany’s Bolgheri, after all, where sunlight and the potential for big levels of ripeness—not to…
Category: wine review
“The Difference” (A Villa Rosa Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Vertical)
Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of bumping into Cecchi fourth-generation wine family icon Andrea Cecchi a handful of times at locales all over the globe, but earlier this year (2025) marked the first time that I had a virtual sit-down with him over Zoom. Not as fun as our usual face-to-face run-ins, but…
Humboldt Out of the Blue (Chile’s Cooling Current)
At this point, I think that Chilean wine is almost running out of marketing angles. To be fair, we’ve seen a whole hell of a lot of those angles over the years, and pretty much all of them have been true. Focusing on an ocean current, though, might be a bit of a stretch, even…
Me, and the Ladies (Maculan Recent Releases)
I’m preparing to jump into some extended coverage of California’s Livermore Valley (with which I have a fairly long history at this point), but before that goes down, I though that I’d drop a quick post about tasting some recent samples (via Zoom) with Veneto producer Maculan. You know, because it’s been something like six…