For those unfamiliar with the gris de gris, it’s one of the more rare wine styles. Untouched, as of yet, by the industry’s hype machine (which is still focused on orange wine and “all-day rosé”), gris de gris is of…
Finally, it arrived – a bottle of clear, ruby liquid… clairet. If you’ll remember from a couple weeks ago, clairet is a type of Bordeaux, the last vestige of the original Bordeaux style. In the Middle Ages, Bordeaux was a…
Regular readers might accuse us of saying some hurtful things about chardonnay – that buttery oak syrup of a wine so often found in cheap magnums on the kitchen counters of the quietly desperate. But really, we like chardonnay. At…
The poet Keats said of ‘claret’ that it did not, like other wines, “assault the cerebral apartments,” “but rather walks like Aladdin about his enchanted palace, so gently you do not feel his step.” A century and two-thirds later, advertising…
“Feels like a wine you’ll find in a Michelin-starred restaurant” says Julien Miquel of our Domaine Aléofane 2019. In case you haven’t yet received your French Collection, Aléofane comes to us from the village of Crozes-Hermitage, which sits on a…
Our upcoming French Collection has more old vine wine than any other collection we’ve sourced. Call it our “old souls” collection… But is that a good thing? More on that in a moment. But first… Why do wine glasses have…
Ladies and gents… we’ve got new French wines on the way! Expect more info on that in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we’ll take a break from our regular programming to enjoy a short French wine “masterclass” with Julien…
Last week we delved into the matter of the shriveled grapes, riddled with botrytis, that grow along the Garonne river south of Bordeaux. But not all shrinkage comes from infection. Nor does winemaking with shriveled grapes always yield sweet whites…
Wine is an infection. A fungus living on the grape skins (yeast, or, more precisely, saccharomyces) infects the grape, eating its sugars, and producing alcohol. But not all infections are created equal. TCA – the dreaded infection responsible for “cork…
It was late in the afternoon when the gaucho spotted the cow. He steadied his horse and raised his hand, signaling to his cumpas that they should fall back and be quiet. “Beautiful hide,” he thought. For a moment he…
