Our first encounter with Martin Muthenthaler in 2014 was at the same Vie Vinum table as our friend and Austrian wine wizard, Peter Veyder-Malberg. All who attended this wonderful biennial event had the fortune to taste the 2013 vintage from every top grower’s Austrian Riesling and Grüner Veltliner. 2013 remains a favorite since I started drinking Austrian wines in the...[ read more ]
As I begin to write this in the middle of September, the leaves of Catalonia’s Costa Brava have started to show the first signs of color change. The sun’s angle is noticeably lower and the sky has a hazy cast softened by feathery cirrus and stratus clouds. The temperature? Perfecto. It’s easy to miss the fall when the summer is...[ read more ]
Walking by the Santa Barbara Mission with my wife on an unseasonably cool day in the second week of July, she said, “The weather is strange this year.” Each year is unique, with 2024 being no exception, and people have said that every year as far back as I can remember. So far it’s been cooler across most of Europe....[ read more ]
After a ten-day trip with our LA tastemaker, JD Plotnick, we were joined in Sicily by the Canary Islands superstar from Bien de Altura, Carmelo Peña Santana. Aside from our growers on Etna, we also squeezed in a moment with the volcano’s renaissance man, Salvo Foti. We don’t work with Salvo, but he opened his door to give us more...[ read more ]
Gen Z already at the helm of a Barolo cantina? Impossible, you say? Nope! Born in 1997, the first year of Z, the inspirational Daniele Marengo from mauro marengo, and Gino Della Porto, the soul-surfing, super-chill Gen X visionary from the establishment-rocking Nizza Monferrato, sette, are about to invade California over the next two weeks. These two long-time chums will...[ read more ]
For the last two months, we temporarily reduced the quantity of wine we’ve been importing in response to California’s sobering six months of film industry strikes and a recovery that’s coming along slower than we’d all like. This month, however, we have a couple of boatloads en route from France and Italy. There aren’t any new producers to report (though...[ read more ]
Despite the ever-increasing market demand for Chablis, it remains the world’s best value for a strictly styled Chardonnay, and the character of its terroir continues to be as expressive as usual despite the regularity of solar beatdowns. Regardless of the conditions, each year keeps us engaged with its flint and iodine, even if sometimes the citrus goes tropical, and the...[ read more ]
