Posts belonging to Category Carignane

sea snails!

Wine goes best with a meal. The role of wine as part of a meal is not to simply complement the food preparations. That would be dull. I am looking for a wine that enhances the meal; increases the experience; brings a rush to the event. When this happens wine is at its best because it drives both sensory and intellectual regions of the brain [ed. see brain map below to identify food regions in the brain]. (more…)

What the heck is going on in Camarillo? When we attend a wine festival, especially in Camarillo, we expect to taste and munch and meet and greet. We are not supposed to discover wines and new labels. The 2012 Taste of Camarillo provided the right concoction of need-sonar-to-find-em wineries [ed. now THAT is under-the-radar], go-for-it winemaking spirit, and excellent food to see something vinous is happening in the breadbasket of SoCal. (more…)

Summer was almost here…then it jumped off the hook just like a River Monster. tBoW and team tasters have been doing our best to get ready for endless heat and long evenings on the patio with corks getting pulled and the BBQ working. Spring cleaning usually turns up a couple surprises but this year we hit the jackpot. Been waiting on this double-and-a-half magnum for some time. We did not know what to expect although we could vouch for the past 20 years of provenance. There’s more. (more…)

Paso Sunshine

Hand over the mantle of leadership for Rhone style wine-making to the Tablas Creek team. Something has happened in Paso and we need to understand how…somehow. A region that once struggled to overcome vegetal Cabernets and tomato-flavored Pinot Noir is the zenith of New World Rhone style wines. No more fruit bombs. Plenty of spine and grip. And lush fruit. (more…)

Arianna Occhipinti works it!

With temps in the 80s, offshore winds and longer daysit is starting to feel like Dotoré’s favorite season. Fighting off the urge to nap we have time to hit you with some wine reviews. And the occasional observation.

What if Andrew Dice Clay reviewed wines?

The Underground Wine Letter is running a series on wine fraud. Phony DRC wines caught at auction. I saw a guy on Auction Hunters crying because he only got $55,000 for his Delorean “time machine.” It was a replica. So these wine frauds pay for empty bottles of premium Bordeaux and Burgundy. If you can get past the effete-iness it makes for interesting reading. Especially the entry where Tilson (UWL editor) goes through a multi-decade process solving a mystery about a case of very unusual 1928 St Emilion he bought at auction. (more…)