Chateau D’Alzon 1949 Saint Emilion
Filed Under The Wine World
The story behind this bottle is intriguing. Discovered in a basement in Philadelphia recently, it was part of a cache of French wines that had been cellared and apparently forgotten about 60 years ago. A great friend of the School, Miguel L, acquired the collection and brought this bottle to class last week.
Tasting Notes:
The wine was remarkably vibrant, despite a minor cork issue. Copper-hued, the palate was still alive with very little oxidization showing.The nose was rich with burnt cedar, cured sausage and naphthalene. Dusty fruit was followed by cream and caramel on the midpalate. In the finish, faded fruits turned into toast and orange rind.
Leave a Comment
The Transparent Company
Filed Under The Wine World
Here is the TRUTH about the Wine School of Philadelphia: we are a school and we teach folks about wine. This apparently obvious concept was tested recently by a student of ours.
The fellow in question attended a cooking class at the school. He was shocked SHOCKED to discover that he was attending a class and NOT a four-course dinner with linen and a sommelier in a tuxedo. Strange, but true.
A series of emails went back and forth between him and myself. Rather than do the usual customer service thing, I opted for something a bit radical: I posted the email exchange on our blog and asked for suggestions. Boy, did I get them! Read more
Leave a Comment
Hunting the Keith Monster
Filed Under The Wine World
A classy film from our recent trip to Bordeaux. I could have posted tasting notes, but that wouldn’t be nearly as fun.
Leave a Comment
The Billionaire’s Vinegar out in Paperback
Filed Under The Wine World
Per The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, May 17, 2009), Benjamin Wallace’s excellent The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine is out in paperback. As I wrote here, Wallace’s book is entertaining, insightful, and definitely a worthwhile read. I recommend adding it to your summer reading list.
Leave a Comment
I stand corrected
Filed Under The Wine World
A couple days back I writ a quickie post regarding George Taber’s original “Judgement of Paris” article published in TIME magazine, 1976. I pointed out that it is now available on TIME’s website in their archives. My apologies to Dale Cruse, as, in my haste, I thoughtlessly left out that I had first learned of the article on his excellent website Drinks Are On Me.
Dale not only sticks to his “no B.S.” policy when it comes to writing on wine, he also offers up Great Guy Food recipes from time to time that I have more than once prepared at home. A good example of this is the amazing Shrimp Clemenceau recipe that has become an instant favorite around our house. It makes great surf to a perfectly grilled turf. Thanks Dale, and again, apologies.
1 Comment
This week in wine? The dogs have it
Filed Under The Wine World
photo by Eliott Erwitt
Dogs have always played a role in the winemaker’s home and vineyard. There is the popular Wine Dogs book series (and, consequently, the Wine Dog Blog); where one can find one, two, three and more, dogs cavorting about, smiling up at their mistresses and/or masters, and prancing among the vines. But I wasn’t expecting to find dogs showing up in an AAWE paper, let alone learn that wine dogs can be much more than mere companions to their folks. Read on.
The American Association of Wine Economist published a paper on a study conducted to see if folks could distinguish dog food from pate. Out of 100 people studied? Only 17% correctly identified the dog food. (Well, at least it was Newman’s Own).
And over at Food and Wine, Ray Isle reports on Ziggy, a 5-year old lab trained to snuffle out cork taint. Read all about it here.
Leave a Comment
Report from Bordeaux
Filed Under The Wine World
Just a quick report from Bordeaux…
We just returned to the farmhouse we’re staying in for the week (purple-teethed, all of us) after a day in St.-Emilion with the winemaker from Chateau Ausone and his brother, who owns an amazing wine shop in the town called Vignobles & Chateau. It was, to say the least, a breathtaking day, full of great wine, fantastic people who could not be more helpful, and a landscape as beautiful as any in the world.
And not only is the wine here as amazing as you’d hope, but the food is absolutely mind-boggling. For me, the Bordelais relationship with food can be summed up with this magnificent fact: We purchased a jar of foie gras in the lot we parked our car in this morning in St.-Emilion. That’s right: parking-lot foie. What a wonderful place.
Leave a Comment
Judgement of Paris
Filed Under The Wine World
The original article – penned by George Taber in 1976 – is now up on the internet via TIME Magazine archives.
1 Comment
Champagne? Oui!
Filed Under The Wine World
It’s now been a week since the Wine School’s Champagne event with The Four Seasons and Nicolas Feuillatte’s Palmes d’Or, and I’m finally getting around to writing about it because I needed some distance for a sense of objectivity to set in.
Alas, I fear that objectivity may not be possible. How is it with such a stellar line-up of wines? (After starting the the Feuillatte 1999 Blanc de Blancs, we moved on to the house’s Palmes d’Or 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, 1992, 1991, 1990, and 1985.) And how is it with such a luxurious menu? (It included stuffed oysters with caviar, foie gras terrine with rhubarb chutney, smoked salmon and quail eggs, and spring pea soup with morels.) And how is it with the winemaker there, and in the magnificent Washington Room, and attended by an absolutely wonderful group of people, friends old and new?
Sometimes, objectivity is just not possible. In these cases, it’s simply best to remember the evening, smile, and look forward to the next one.
Leave a Comment
The Wine “Curve”
Filed Under The Wine World
A few years back while channel surfing I settled on a television rarity – a program about wine that was informative without being insufferably boring or contrived. What stuck was an interview with an older French gentleman who was the latest master of a great Bordeaux chateau, possibly a first growth. He modestly stated that he’d been drinking a bottle a day of the estate’s wine for over half a century…and was just discovering what the grapes were expressing.
That self-effacing revelation undescored what is, perhaps, the only mathematical certainty regarding wine – that there is no learning “curve” per se. Rather, the path to understanding wine is a line in its purest form, progressing by the glass into infinity.
People sometimes ask me the best wine I’ve ever had. My stock answer, without attempting to be disingenuous, is that I’ve yet to drink it. The point being that the love of wine is truly a lifetime learning experience, a passion that should never wane, a book of knowledge with no last page. And as with life, it’s a compendium of bottled moments from disappointing to satisfactory to exhilirating that make it all worthwhile.
Leave a Comment keep looking »
Online Wine?
Get connected to the Wine School online! From our popular wine rating & review newsletter to our 1/4 million wine-related contacts on Linkedin to our daily "Life at the Wine School" tweets. Its all yours, for free.
