This year I once again had the honor of judging alongside several of my wine biz cohorts at what has become one of my favorite weekends all year: the San Francisco International Wine Competition, held at the swanky and suave Hotel Nikko in downtown SF. The 2019 SFIWC incarnation took place November 9th through November…
Category: elegant wines
Putting a Thermal Spring in Your Step (the Wines of Thermenregion)
Back in May (I know, I know…), I was a media guest for the 2019 Austrian Wine Summit, during which I was lucky enough to participate in a tour “along the Danube,” visiting and tasting through Austria’s classic wine producing regions. It was pretty much as awesome as that sentence makes it sound. Even so,…
Scandal-Less is More (Flowers Winery Recent Releases)
There’s nothing like a good scandal to encourage a hit of the reset button. Or, in the case of Sonoma’s venerable Flowers Winery, it’s more akin to just hitting the next-phase button. Flowers has always seem to operate a bit under-the-radar by upper-tier California wine brand standards; which makes sense, considering that founders Joan and…
Sektarian (Tasting through the New Austrian Sekt Pyramid for NVWA)
Earlier this year, I happened to get invited to the 2019 Austrian Wine Summit because, well, I’m just that kind of lucky fellow these days. Since one should almost always begin with bubbles, it seems apt that my first foray into an Austrian wine feature would be about the official changes to their sparkling wine…