Uhm, like what is this stuff?
I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine sample tasting notes via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be fun, quickly-and-easily-digestible reviews. Below is a wrap-up of the twitter reviews from the past week (click here for the skinny on how to read them), along with links to help you find them so you can try them for yourself. Cheers!

• 10 Undone Dry Riesling (Rheinhessen): Lemon, lychee and lime, enjoy social gatherings, available now and looking for a good time. $11 B- >>find this wine>>
• NV J Vineyards Brut Rose (Russian Ricer Valley): Cherries on leisurely citrus peel ride down rosewater stream; ok, cheesy but it fits! $25 B >>find this wine>>
• 07 Henrys Drive Reserve Shiraz (Padthaway): Tithe paid in spices & tangy red fruit makes ample amends for transgression of enormity. $40 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 08 Petaluma Hanlin Hill Riesling (Clare Valley): Lemon & lime fully suited, engines revving, w/ pit crew carrying extra cans of petrol $20 B >>find this wine>>
• 06 Tahbilk Shiraz (Nagambie Lakes): Delivering big, luxurious Godiva-chocolaty Shiraz flavor at more of a Whitmans Sampler box price. $16 B >>find this wine>>
• 04 Mount Langi Ghiran Langi Shiraz (Grampians): A Zoro of an Aussie red, dazzling you & then riding off with your horse (& your wife) $44 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 09 Trattore Estate Diamond Tread Red (Dry Creek Valley): Leaves a trail of rustic, spicy, bright fruit thats easy to follow (& drink) $29 B >>find this wine>>
• 10 Liebfrauenstift Riesling Trocken (Rheinhessen): Serve to your Chardonnay-snob friends, sit back & watch the ensuing sparks fly. $15 B >>find this wine>>
• 08 Turkey Flat Butchers Block Red (Barossa): Simultaneously enlightening & ass-kicking, like Neo sparring w/ Morpheus in The Matrix. $27 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 10 Eden Road Wines Gundagai Shiraz (Canberra): Enough bright red fruit, pepper & minerals to pass for hipster from the Rhone. $18 B >>find this wine>>
• 04 Cape Mentelle Cabernet Sauvignon (Margaret River): Theres a word for this, & that word is lovely (followed by food-friendly). $50 A- >>find this wine>>
• 09 Leeuwin Estate Art Series Riesling (Margaret River): Steely & almost standoffish; wants you to come back, just not for 3 or 4 yrs. $22 B >>find this wine>>
• 08 Schild Estate Sparkling Shiraz (Barossa): A dark-berry, smoked-meat… samosa?!? Yeah, well… I was pleasantly shocked, too. $29 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 08 Michel Torino Don David Malbec Reserve (Calchaqui Valley): Too toasty; but it brought spices and flowers, which was thoughtful. $15 B- >>find this wine>>
• 07 Brothers Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon (Alexander Valley): Blackcurrant hand in a leather glove, its grip slowly crushing your fingers. $75 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 10 Standing Stone Vineyards Riesling (Finger Lakes): Gives you apples, pears & a serious longing for more complex German Riesling. $13 C+ >>find this wine>>

Continuing our Champagne theme for the Weekly Wine Quiz, we’ve got a relatively tough question queued up this week. Let’s see which of you Champers fans really knows his or her (or, if you’re a hermaphrodite, his AND her) stuff…

 When It Comes To Bubbly, Do You Know Your Letters?

Champagne production is one of the most highly-regulated in all of the wine world, with each bottle receiving a registration number for its producer issued by the region’s governing body, and each label receiving a designation code that represents how the wine was made. What Champagne label code signifies that a Champagne was produced independently by an individual estate / grape grower?

• A. CM
• B. MA
• C. NM
• D. RC
• E. RM

As requested by you, the abnormally intelligent and good-looking 1WD readers, the answer will be forthcoming in the comments later. In the meantime, fire away if you think you know the answer (and want to show off your wine smarties)!

Cheers – and good luck!

Considering that I’ve been so surprised by the high quality of some Aussie white wines in the last several months, it seems surprising that I should be surprised at all when Aussie wine surprises me these days.

And yet, my mind is simple enough (and apparently entrenched enough in its own little preconceived notions) that the Aussie wine surprises keep coming (good and bad, but probably much more good than bad right now).

Such was the case at last week’s A+ Aussie Wine public tasting event at Espace in NYC, called “Around Australia In 80 Sips” and organized jointly by Bottlenotes and Wines of Australia (of whom I was a media guest). [ By the way, the "A+" thing is their marketing label, not mine. ]

The Aussie’s in the biz who attended refer to this sort of public tasting event as a “swim through” – I’ll let your imagination fill in the blanks on what that means, but let’s just say I had to fight to make my way to poorly-placed spit buckets, and I was by far in the minority in terms of actually using them.

The volume of imbibing aside, it was great to see so many people (a few hundred NYCers) – and predominantly young people, who apparently haven’t heard (or are just ignoring) the misinformation that Aussie wine is dead – coming out to get a crash-course in what Aussie wine has to offer the U.S. market.  Something like forty wineries participated – mostly the big ones, which very likely isn’t a true representation of the diversity of the Aussie wine market, but was certainly an accurate representation of the Aussie producers most people are likely to find available on our shores.

The surprises for me this time? The reds…

Read the rest of this stuff »

I was recently interviewed by WineSpiralProject.com, as part of their series on wine industry innovation, in which they interview personalities in the wine world and ask them to share thoughts on the wine biz and how it can/should innovate.

Yeah, I know, I’m not 100% certain why they picked me either, but what’s done is done so let’s just roll with it, okay?

You can check out the entire series of interviews at this link; I’ll give the the super-short, edited-down-to-the-bare-bones-Cliff-Notes version of my interview right here:

Wineries are amazing at production innovation; Wineries suck at engagement innovation.

It’s not in bottling lines or fermentation vessels that we need an innovation push in the wine biz; we need innovation in adjusting the attitude that most wine producers have towards consumers. What do I mean by “engagement innovation?” Short answer: using the single most innovative outreach platform ever developed in the history of the human race – the Internet – to directly engage the people who buy their shiz. This may sound like common sense to you, but a lot of the producers I encounter seem to need reminding that those consumers – and not critics – are the ones who matter the most…

Read the rest of this stuff »