Jean-Michel Deiss likes to talk spit. That his family, winegrowers since 1744, are established as the Alsatian version of winemaking royalty probably helps him to get away with it. “Wine today is an industrial project,” he told me (through interpretation) during a media tour visit to Domaine Marcel Deiss‘ Bergheim winery. “But great wine is…
Category: sexy wines
The People’s Republic (Highlights From “Authentic Alentejo”)
In the grand scheme of the wine world, Portugal appears to be the county that stands tall, despite its relatively small size (about 575 miles long, and just under 140 miles wide). In Napoleonic-complex fashion, it makes up for its stature in other ways; Portugal is in the top ten worldwide in vineyard acreage, per…
Contact Points (A Decade Of Cà Maiol’s Molin Lugana)
Walter Contato knew potential when he saw it. Like an inordinate number of Italians before and after him, this successful Milan-born businessman took holidays in the sometimes-too-charming-for-words (as in, how-the-hell-are-we-gonna-get-the-car-through-these-narrow-Medieval-streets?!?? levels of charming) Lake Garda town of Sirmione. As an inordinate number of successful white businessmen seem to want to still do, Contato eventually decided…
Complex, With A Complex (Vinas del Vero Somontano Recent Releases)
What do you do when your identity, your story, and even your best efforts are only seen through the contextual lens of your more famous cousins? Besides developing an inferiority complex, I mean? After all, major characters in Greek tragedies were written with this stuff in mind; and it happens to be the defining lucha…