So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

By now, most of you reading this will have at least some knowledge of the devastation that is impacting Northern California wine country in the wake of over one dozen fires that, at the time of this writing, have left over twenty people dead, burned more than three thousand or more structures to the ground, […] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting...

When I visited venerable Alsatian wine icon Hugel on a media jaunt earlier this year (2017), they were nary a year removed from the family tragedy of Etienne Hugel's untimely death, and their CEO had left the company the week prior to my visit. When I mentioned to 13th-generation family member Marc-André Hugel that many […] Grab The 1WineDu...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

Once again with travel looming, and with a break between bouts of Alsace coverage probably not being that bad of an idea, we're going with an early run of the monthly wine product review roundup (in which we highlight wine product samples that I receive that cannot be safely digested). First up, we go (very) […] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tastin...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

"We are very cheap for a Grand Cru!" It could be said that Domaines Schlumberger‘s Thomas Schlumberger doesn't fully understand the negative connotations of the word "cheap" in the English language. I write that because, as he told me the above quote during a media visit to the Guebwiller property that has been in his […] Grab The 1Win...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

Jean-Michel Deiss likes to talk spit. That his family, winegrowers since 1744, are established as the Alsatian version of winemaking royalty probably helps him to get away with it. "Wine today is an industrial project," he told me (through interpretation) during a media tour visit to Domaine Marcel Deiss‘ Bergheim winery. "But great wine is [...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

My latest article for the online celebration of all things vinous in Monferrato, MyNameIsBarbera.com, is now available; and in it, I explore the born-to-be-wildness of one of Italy's most unsung fine wine grapes, Grignolino. If you've never tried a good Grignolino before, you're un-enviably currently missing out, but are enviably in for a real trea...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

With some crazy travel happening in the short term, I'm making the executive decision to go ahead and give you the September 2017 edition of the monthly wine product review roundup a bit on the early side (rather than scrambling to get my act together on it at the end of the month, which is […] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start ...

"The most endangered species “ The honest man" -Rush, Natural Science In the great room of my house, there are two 5″x7″ framed prints in Chinese script, each of which represents one of the two "house rules" of the home shared by me and my daughter (it's generally too big of a space for the […] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guid...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

For Riesling lovers, the last four years in particular have been a good time to be alive. On one side of the shiny Riesling-fine-wine-world-market coin, Europe's traditional flag-bearing regions of that grape been performing well; on the other side, we've seen the emergence of up-and-coming areas that, while far from wine-drinking household names, ...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

In the grand scheme of the wine world, Portugal appears to be the county that stands tall, despite its relatively small size (about 575 miles long, and just under 140 miles wide). In Napoleonic-complex fashion, it makes up for its stature in other ways; Portugal is in the top ten worldwide in vineyard acreage, per […] Grab The 1WineDude.com ...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

Walter Contato knew potential when he saw it. Like an inordinate number of Italians before and after him, this successful Milan-born businessman took holidays in the sometimes-too-charming-for-words (as in, how-the-hell-are-we-gonna-get-the-car-through-these-narrow-Medieval-st reets?!?? levels of charming) Lake Garda town of Sirmione. As an inordina...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

Due to family vacationing, I'm getting a slight jump start on the monthly wine product review roundup (I've got plenty of wine coverage coming, so don't worry your pretty little inebriated heads over that, ok?). And, thankfully, I've got two fairly-priced wine preservation gadgets from the sample pool that are absolutely worthy of your (sober) [...

The latest article in my storytelling Monferrato journey is now available over at MyNameIsBarbera.com, and in it we take a deeper dive directly into the terroir (and I mean down to the dirt level!) of the venerable Nizza DOCG. Those of you who have been following along with my Northern Italian antics might recall that […] Grab The 1WineDude....

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

By the time that you read these, the results of the 37th (!!) annual San Francisco International Wine Competition should be publicly available, so I thought that I would share some of the highlights among the event's big winners. The SFIWC is one of my favorite weekends of the year. Under the watchful eyes of […] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasti...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

In this too-steamy month's round up of non-drinkable wine product samples, I've got two items to highlight that I can recommend without nary a reservation; and for me, when it comes to putting wine products to the test, that's the wine scribe's equivalent of a tall, cold glass of Soave on a hot Summer's day. […] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tastin...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

What do you do when your identity, your story, and even your best efforts are only seen through the contextual lens of your more famous cousins? Besides developing an inferiority complex, I mean? After all, major characters in Greek tragedies were written with this stuff in mind; and it happens to be the defining lucha […] Grab The 1WineDude...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

Earlier this week, I was quoted by author, veteran wine competition judge, and personal friend Michael Cervin on his big, Boozehoundz. In that article, Michael included my now-exceedingly-repetitive advice on wine PR, along with much more helpful words from others far more versed in the wine PR field, regarding the value of public relations in [...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

Like most musicians (ask me how I know), Luca Formentini has a day job. That job would be helping to helm his family's wine business in Brescia: Selva Capuzza. As far as day jobs go, the one with an office that's actually a picturesque vineyard spot about four kilometers from the shores of Lake Garda, […] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

The latest episode in the Barbera: In The Glass series is now live at MyNameIsBarbera.com, and in it I continue my conversation with Vinchio and Vaglio˜s Tessa Donadieu. This time, we focus on the next "level" of the Barbera quality pyramid in Monferrato (which, as I have written before, I don't think is a "pyramid" […] Grab The 1WineDude.co...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

Here we are again… and by "we" I mean "me," waxing not-so-poetic about some of the samples that I receive that cannot be imbibed (at least, not without the use of a blender and several thousand dollars in resultant medical bills). This month, I've got two items to recommend, though I do so with slight […] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting...

For my latest entry over at MyNameIsBarbera.com, we return to some video action for the Barbera: In the Glass As section. In this short episode, I get schooled by Vinchio and Vaglio‘s Tessa Donadieu on why the wine that forms the base of the Monferrato Barbera quality pyramid – the Piemonte Barbera DOC – ought to […] Grab T...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

"As uvas de Terrantez Não as coma nem as dês, Para vinho Deus as fez." * Earlier this month, I had what amounted to a kind of dream speaking gig for me: leading Madeira masterclasses in both Boston (at Committee) and NYC (at Rouge Tomate Chelsea). Pinch meeeeeee!!!! I was a hired gun for these […] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and s...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

I was once again fortunate enough to be invited to judge at the annual Critics Challenge International Wine competition,As which took place late last month in Stay-Classy San Diego. CC is always one of the highlights of my professional year; the organizers, volunteers, and fellow judges are all top-notch, and the fact that they're also great [̷...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

Alessandro Cutolo kind of looks like a viking. Aside from close proximity to a body of water (in this case, the Italian Lake Garda), however, the heavy-handed Old Norse warrior comparison fizzles out completely. Because at the crossing of the Veneto and Lombardia regions, Cutolo, as owner and winemaker of Lugana's Marangona, crafts elegant, svelte ...

And you thought that I'd forgotten about the monthly wine product sample round up here, didn't you? C'mon… admit it… This month, I've got two wine gadgets to mention, both of which are technically multi-purpose, and both of which are well worth a look. Unfortunately, only one of them is what I would consider an […] Grab The 1Wine...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

Ok… so… in my latest piece for MyNameIsBarbera.com, I compareAs Ruchè to Deadpool. I know… it's not Barbera (but it is from the land of Barbera, and many a Barbera producer also offer excellent Ruchè wines)… and, well… yeah, Deadpool. It's so crazy that it just might work, right? Look, Deadpool is quirky, unique, and...

Forthwith, we continue my highlights from the 2017 incarnation of VinItaly, held in Verona earlier this year, and to which I was lucky enough to have been invited as a media guest. [ For background on VinItaly, details on the first batch of wines that grabbed my vinous attention at the event, and the format […] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting...

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available […] Grab The 1W...

VinItaly is… well… totally folle. Held in Verona, Italy, bringing together hundreds of soon-to-be-inebriated members of the wine biz/trade/press/you-name-it, and functioning as a focal point for all (and I do mean all) of the wine regions of Italy, there is no other world wine event that combines quite the same blend of creativity, craf...