Posts belonging to Category Merlot

my Garagiste fever dream

This is a story about a descent into wine madness albeit mild madness, we think. You be the judge. A conspiracy of circumstance and opportunity when everything just happened to fall into place at the same time. Kris-B introduced tBoW to Garagiste in January 2011. We looked. We read. We dipped. The first order was a 2009 Hautes Cotes de Beaune Debray that was all of $16 and change. We’re suckers for the region, vintage and especially the value price. As Sanni Bananny would put it…this was the gateway buy. (more…)

wedding style in Sevilla

After touring southern Spain for a couple weeks it is obvious the rules for tasting and writing about wine must be rewritten. At least when it comes to southern Spain the commonly accepted and greatly emulated business of swirling, sniffing, comparing, opining, recalling and placing the drink in context of anything simply does not apply. This is a land where life is all at once and wine is an important part of the experience…as is love…as is living…as is dressing to show it off. When it comes to wine you should pull the cork, fill a copaand throw it down the gullet with a bite of something. Wine is often served chilled regardless of color. Eat. Talk. Look at your surroundings. (more…)

they have a wine

Poker players like to say “I’d rather be lucky than good.” Is this just another way of saying you do something often enough you’re bound to fall into something good sometime? Vince Neil and his band were very very lucky. They made superb RnR and at some point Vince made a wine. We have not tasted it. But we do have a motley assortment of other wine odds and ends. [ed. Dude that would have been cool tasting the Cr√ºe wine. I thought you knew people.] (more…)

swirl the glass then sniff with gusto

We prefer to write about wines we favor which are generally Old World whites, reds and ros√©s. The tBoW tasting team clearly prefers Pinot Noir along with Italian varietals. However, we also have the occasional NoCal Cabernet Sauvignon or big Aussie Red [ed. there's another kind of Aussie red?] put in front of us and without other choices we slurp. There is one exception: we would never turn down a Ridge Monte Bello. Here are the notes from an assortment of these exceptionable remarkably de trop red wines rarely covered here purely for selfish reasons. Hey…they weren’t so bad. Oh yes…also a nearly 30 year old Oporto and one very good and unusual white wine. (more…)