Ahh, fall. So far, it’s been pretty warm (and occasionally even sunny!). But with leaves turning and falling all around us, Matt and I are turning our thoughts towards fall. I get cold easily, so firewood, slow cooked food, and throw blankets are a must. Somewhere in the last month, with cold rain coming through [...]
So, I’m still the new kid in town, eager to please, and I have a question for you. Are you looking for reviews? As a teacher I’m awash in numbers and data and objective ratings. But wine isn’t objective. It’s subjective. Wine will taste one way to me, another to Matt, another to Gary, and [...]
On a recent dreary and cold Saturday night I found myself scanning for something interesting among the shelves at Casa Mia’s in White Marsh. Bypassing the usual this or the usual that–Casa Mia’s, to their credit, has an entirely adequate wine selection—I came upon a Boordy Vineyards release with an unusual price tag: $25. The [...]
The wine known Big House Red began under the umbrella of Randal Grahams’ Bonny Doon Vineyards. In 2006, Graham sold the brand to The Wine Group. The quality of the wine, which was already squarely in the mediocre-but-cheap category, took a dive and became less of a value even at $9 per bottle. Recently, the [...]
Recall, if you will, last year’s Top 5 wines of 2009. Only one wine cracked 90 points, the rest shuffled in at 89 or 88. 2010 clocked in a lot better, particularly in the early months. I had a long dry spell int he summertime where I can’t remember drinking anything of note. December stole [...]
Guest post this week by Jon from Manfred Macx Rather than fisticuffs at the local Best Buy, the family and I instead opted to spend Black Friday at a few Maryland wineries. Our launching point was a beautiful rental house on the beach in Scotland. Along for the ride were my wife, our two daughters, [...]
Blind tasted a Maryland wine against a California wine last week just to see how we’re coming along versus the big boys out there. In the Maryland corner was the 2008 Boordy Petit Cabernet. Its opponent: the 2007 Concannon Conservancy Petite Sirah. Concannon’s Conservancy line hails from the Livermore Valley of California. We were fortunate [...]
Part of the mystique and allure of wine is the marvelously inefficient packaging. Soda cans have evolved to save aluminum. Costco sells milk in updated milk containers to save stacking space. It’s the nature of the beast: be more efficient than your competitors or you will lose. While this may be true in the wine [...]
Ghost Block is produced by an outfit called Bonded Winery Number 9 based in Napa, California. 2003 was the first vintage of this Oakville Cabernet and by 2004 the wine was receiving modest praise. The Wine Spectator gave it a 92. Doug Wilder called it “Better than some of the cults.” and hung a 96 [...]
Attended a well-appointed cookout this weekend and a blind wine tasting broke out. Some of the most respected wine critics in Washington DC my friends bagged six wines and drank up, recording our data on my freshly printed wine tasting sheets. The theme was Syrah/Shiraz. Guests were asked to bring a wine where Syrah was [...]
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