Wine

Super Rich Kids

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File this under the Not-Something-You-Get-To-Taste-Everyday File…

Lauren from Vintner Select hit me up with an appointment with three wines I couldn’t even believe I was being offered the chance to try.  Eisele Vineyard – which had been renamed Araujo Vineyards from 1990 to 2013 – was made Eisele Vineyard again by the new owners, the Pinault family (which owns Chateau Latour in Bordeaux, Chateau Grillet in the Rhone and Domaine d’Eugenie in Burgundy).

Come On In My Kitchen

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Remember when I said this business is a small world?  Dear friend and traveller Jen Petrey, who ventured out to California a few years back, dropped in as the new McNab Ridge rep for this neck of the woods.  I’ve known Jen for a long time, and it was cool to see she had landed at such a great place.

For a bit of history, winemaker John Parducci purchased McNab Ridge Winery in 1999,

California’s All Right (Somebody Check My…)

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Founded in 1985, the year I graduated high school (which has no applicable bearing on this conversation whatsoever), by Dr. Elias Hanna, it is currently owned and operated by Christine Hanna, his daughter, and along with winemaker Jeff Hinchliffe, they create some terrific wines from Russian River Valley and Alexander Valley in California.

Jeff had recently dropped in on the team here at Eastgate,

It Is Indeed A Small World After All

The Wine Cellar Soliloquies, Part Two

​Wine is transportive.  Yeah, that’s the spirit.  Sometimes it’s a time machine, or at least I get that feeling every so often.  Growing up, I had a lot of relations with fruit trees, bushes, gardens, and one other thing that always stood out for me was the grocery store.  Once I had a bit of independence as a kid – I was 9 or 10 at the time – I would ride my bike around the neighborhood,

Whimsically Indulging In That Ol’ Box-O-Chocolates Paradigm

Thus the circle closed when an old friend,

The Wine Cellar Soliloquies, Part One

Ok, confession time.  Every so often, when meeting with sales reps, and tasting wines from wherever-in-the-world, my mind drifts a little.  Daydream multitasking, I guess that’d be what you’d call it (or momentary internalized enhancements).  I’m not ignoring the person presenting by any means.  I hear them.  I am listening, processing, ingesting.  But their voices become a kind-of Morgan Freeman-like narration on some magical journey a la Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.  There’s the narrator –

(Drinking) Under The Tuscan Sun

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Sometimes, tasting wine can be a platform for intrigue, noir and dark romanticism.  The immersiveness of the wines themselves can lend themselves to adventures in the mind only fueled by the next sip of wine.

Our All-star rep Kerri dropped in on us a while back, and tasted us through the Tuscan wines of Castello dei Trebbio and Cascadei.  These terrific reds come to us through the Cline Family,

My Ever Growing Besotted Family Of Nerds

Wine Department: The Wine of Kings and Other Things That Makes The Piedmont Wine Region So Great

Piedmont. Pronounced “peh-ah-MON-tey.” Italy’s other famous wine region. The home to almost a third of Italy’s total population (the Po River Valley, within which Piedmont resides, is home to the bustling metropolises of Turin and Milan) is also home to two of wine nerds’ greatest loves – Barolo and Barbaresco. Towns as well as wines, these noble wines are made entirely from the mighty Nebbiolo grape, a rich, powerful and tannic grape variety that gives you structure and patience gives you complexity.