I like wine (duh).  I also favor, and am often drawn to, personalities that are high-energy, engaging or highly-knowledgeable about their fields of expertise.

No surprise, then, that I consider Mark Oldman one of the most dynamic – and one of the best – wine educators in the world, since he’s got it going on all three fronts.

Most folks out there will recognize Mark’s face as the lead judge from the PBS reality-tv series The Winemakers, or will recall his name as the guy who makes the wine picks for the 15+ million readers of Everyday with Rachael Ray magazine.  But I recognize Mark as the guy who wrote the beginner’s wine book that I’ve recommended more than any other wine publication – Oldman’s Guide To Outsmarting Wine.  My standard line about Mark’s first book for years has been, "this is the one to try first for anyone beginning to get ‘into’ wine; it’s the book I wish I’d had at my side when I was first starting out as a wine buff."  In other words, I thought it was an instance classic.

Outsmarting is still largely unmatched for its combination of verve, intelligence and accessibility – a lot like Mark himself, as you’ll quickly learn from our interview below.  Mark has a new book on the shelves (I received a review copy) – Oldman’s Brave New World of Wine - and it’s geared towards the Intermediate stage of one’s vinous journey.  In the pages of Brave New World of Wine, Mark offers up wine recommendations slightly off the beaten path, meant to expand your wine knowledge and delight without expending your bank account.  For the most part, the new book is another stellar achievement for Mark, and more often than not I found myself nodding along with his recommendations and witty-but-wise takes on lesser-known varieties (turns out we’re both nuts for Nero d’Avola, ravenous for Rosé, and on a tear for Torrontés).

Mark took some time out of his busy book tour schedule to answer a few questions about his new book, the next season of The Winemakers, and how he got started inthe wine biz.  Turns out that Mark also shares my affinity for the music of a certain long-standing Canadian power rock trio (as if I needed more reasons to like the guy at this point).

Before this intro. turns into another version of "I Love You, Man," I’ll turn it over to the interview…

Enjoy!…

Read the rest of this stuff »

Although the term terroir gets tossed around like confetti at an Italian wedding these days, there are several (mostly family-owned and –operated) wine properties in Napa and Sonoma that are taking the idea seriously.

One such property is Benziger, who biodynamically farm grapes and make wine in a beautiful section of Sonoma County.  So much so that they’ve hired self-proclaimed terroir specialist Dr. Pedro Parra to help them analyze the soils and subsoils of their vineyard locations – involving scientific analysis and the digging of deep trenches at strategic locations in the vineyards to examine the soil profiles and root growth.  You can see some of this in the video coverage below.

General Manager Mike Benziger and I sat down last week at the family winery to talk about California wine, terroir, dirt, and Dr. Parra’s unique work, but failed to discuss the strange state of my wind-blown hair.  Enjoy!

Cheers!

Last night I had the pleasure of both drinking some damn good nectar (2004 Klein Constantia Vin de Constance) and doing a Skype video interview with DrinkNectar.com’s Josh Wade.  Josh asked me about the “Advance Wine Blogging” panel at the upcoming 2010 Americas Wine Bloggers Conference.  He also interviews Joe (The Suburban Wino) Herrig about his “Top Gun Wine Blogging” panel at WBC10, which appears on the same post.

As for the wine, I’d link to the mini-review of the Constantia, if it weren’t for twitter going #FAIL Whale on me as I type this.  So, here ‘tis in unimpressive text form:

04 Klein Constantia Vin de Constance (Constantia): S.A.’s legendary Muscat lives up to the legend w/ orange, mango & spices to spare. $50 A-

Anyway, the interview is embedded below but I also recommend heading over to DrinkNectar.com to check out Josh’s posts and videos, if you’re not already a regular reader.

Cheers!

Reading Corked: A Memoir, you may find that you don’t much like author Kathryn Borel.  And it will probably have nothing to do with her being a Canadian (sorry, Canada… just poking fun at you because you won all of those Olympic hockey gold medals…).

She is, by her own fearless admission, not the best of traveling companions. Neither is her father, with whom she travels to some of France’s most famous wine regions in an attempt to connect more deeply with him while they still have time together on this planet.  Even a healthy proportion of the storied French wine producers that the Borel clan visit in Corked are portrayed as, to put it mildly, difficult.

Corked isn’t about wine appreciation, but it touches on the topic frequently and views it obliquely, as if through a funky, tilted lens; it circles the topic as if both wine and Kathryn were old cats in some new territory – familiar, but with a sense of fight-or-flight caution.  Let’s put it this way: Kathryn describes her new book (also her first) as being about “wine, France, my father, existential dread, and death.”  So you know the viewpoint on wine is going to be different.

As it turns out, wine plays a minor, but important, role in Kathryn’s sometimes hilarious, sometimes quirky, sometimes painful recounting of her journey through French wine country – at turns a vehicle for connectivity, and an insurmountable and intimidating barrier.

And it’s exactly because of that unique viewpoint that I was so stoked to read Corked and to interview its author (if you need further convincing of Kathryn’s unique view on life, just check out how she introduces Corked on video, or visit her craftily quirky – or is that quirkily crafty? – blog).

If Corked reveals a truth about the human condition, it’s that coming to a shared understanding as adults – to a place where we can truly appreciate one another – isn’t always as simple as sharing a glass of excellent vino; sometimes it takes a gut-wrenching rite of passage.  That probably mirrors the relationship some of us have with wine at one point or another in our lives.

Read on for the interview, which is mostly full of wine-related topics but, thanks to Kathryn, is totally full of awesome – just prepare to be entertained, a little moved, and a lot impressed by his woman…

Read the rest of this stuff »