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April 2006
Family Goodbyes at Montrose and Pichon-Lalande
Posted: 02:44 PM ET, May 06, 2006
LOS ANGELES – I had dinner last night at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant Chinoise on Main for a vertical tasting of Trimbach Clos Ste.-Hune and Cuvée Frederic Emile. As good as the wines were, the most impressive part of the tasting was a short conversation I had with Jean-Michel Cazes of Château Lynch-Bages. Read more
Bring Your Own: Grange Hermitage
Posted: 12:49 PM ET, May 05, 2006
LOS ANGELES – This is a city where many restaurants do not seem to mind if you bring your own bottle to dinner or lunch as long as it’s something serious. I have been to dozens of places with friends who pack serious bottles in leather cases to take to restaurants in La La. Read more
Does Everybody Want Pinot Noir in the Big Apple?
Posted: 08:11 AM ET, May 04, 2006
NEW YORK -- Had dinner last night at Gramercy Tavern – one of my favorite restaurants in New York -- with another senior editor of the magazine, Dana Nigro, and we drank a bottle of 1999 Hartford Court Pinot Noir Marin County. It was a very good juicy and fresh Pinot with lots of strawberry and light earth aromas and flavors. Read more
Cabernet Flashbacks
Posted: 05:59 PM ET, May 02, 2006
NEW YORK -- I had a glass of the 2000 Clos Du Val Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon on my American Airlines flight from Rome to New York, and it brought back fond memories. The wine in my glass was good quality with currant bush, mushroom and chocolate aromas. Read more
No Faith or Fed Up?
Posted: 04:40 AM ET, May 02, 2006
ROME -- I am boarding a plane from Rome to New York for the Wine Spectator Grand Tour tonight, and I just read James Hannan’s remark about Bordeaux. I am scratching my head a bit. I have the same idea about how Bordeaux represents relatively good value, even many of the top wines, and it doesn’t seem that many people understand this. Read more
“Where Are We Going” with 1988 Latour?
Posted: 04:33 PM ET, April 30, 2006
VENICE – Woke up this morning to cold and wet weather that resembled winter. What happened to the spring? I am surprised I haven’t caught a cold.
I got back to the apartment I was renting at about 1:30 a.m., soaked in rain as well as 1988 Château Latour. Read more
Stupidity, Greed or Does It Matter?
Posted: 08:26 AM ET, April 28, 2006
The European wine trade has been talking a lot about the massive price increase for the 2005 wine from St. Emilion estate of Quinault L'Enclos. I am not sure what price it was sold to the Bordeaux wine trade, but in England it appears to be going for about 250 Sterling a case, or $450. Read more
Zurich Tasting Tales
Posted: 05:26 AM ET, April 28, 2006
I organized a lunch yesterday with some wine trade and collector friends in Zurich in what is one of the best Italian restaurants in the city – Ristorante La Rocca. Most of the invitees brought along some interesting bottles to try. There was no real theme, just the chance to hang together and taste some good wines. Read more
My First Experience with 2005 Germans
Posted: 12:25 PM ET, April 26, 2006
Just tasted a tiny selection of some 2005 Mosels and...WOW. I am in Zurich for a couple of days, and my friend Beat Caduff, of Caduff's Wine Loft, served us some killer Rieslings. He says that 2005 is the best vintage he has ever tasted in the 15 years he has been traveling to Germany to taste young wines from vat and cask. Read more
More Half Bottles!
Posted: 04:43 AM ET, April 25, 2006
From all of your comments, half bottles are a good thing. AND I COULDN’T AGREE MORE.
What you should consider is buying en primeur, or futures, of Bordeaux, Port and anything else on offer. This usually enables you to order what bottle size you want, from mega sizes such as imperials to half bottles. Read more
Half Bottle Magic
Posted: 04:45 AM ET, April 23, 2006
Just me and my children last night for dinner. I decide to throw a “bisteccca” on the grill and toss a simple green salad. And I wasn’t about to drink water with it!
So I went down to my cellar and tried to find a half bottle. Read more
La Barberia Moderna
Posted: 04:56 AM ET, April 22, 2006
Went to the barber this morning in our nearby village of San Giustino Valdarno with my son Jack. (He didn’t like his haircut. Too short!). It was about 10 am in the morning, sunny and warm already. I think that the wet weather is finally ending and spring is definitely here. Read more
Words on 2005 Bordeaux
Posted: 05:17 PM ET, April 20, 2006
Spoke to Christian Moueix on the telephone this afternoon. His family is the powerhouse in Right Bank Bordeaux wines, controlling such great names as Pétrus, Lafleur Petrus, Trotanoy and Magdelaine--among others. He sounded pretty exhausted after a few weeks of welcoming and tasting wines with wine merchants from all over the world who were dying to evaluate (and buy) the 2005s. Read more
Birthday Bottle
Posted: 09:34 AM ET, April 19, 2006
I just finished lunch at the restaurant below my house in Il Borro. It was the birthday of my colleague Jo Cooke, and I decided to try to find something special in my cellar to drink with him. I knew that Jo was a big fan of Léoville Las Cases. Read more
Barbera Easter Sunday
Posted: 01:27 PM ET, April 16, 2006
Returned from a walk in the countryside with my two dogs and my 11-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter. My childern are visiting from England. We had a simple lunch for Easter Sunday–fettuccine all’Alfredo (cream, butter and parmesan sauce) and tomato salad. Read more
Tuscan Car Wash
Posted: 02:00 PM ET, April 14, 2006
Just got back from washing my car. It was about 75 degrees today and sunny. The vines are starting to grow in my area near Arezzo in Tuscany.
Anyway, I was talking to the old guy who was helping me dry my car and he was saying how he made fantastic wines from the 500 vines he has near the gas station in the next-door village of Castiglion Fibocchi. Read more
Bordeaux Tales I
Posted: 04:02 AM ET, April 13, 2006
Went to a friend’s house for dinner a couple of nights ago and brought some leftover, half-full bottle samples of 2003 Bordeaux. I did a blind tasting in my office in Tuscany of these wines. They were latecomers because some, such as Pavie, were not in bottle yet for my tasting late last year, and others simply weren’t available. Read more
When It's Not For Consumption
Posted: 09:58 AM ET, April 11, 2006
I don’t see too many first-growth investors on my blog…. Good thing.
But the fact is that there are many out there. My friend in Hong Kong has customers who have bought 25 cases of 1982, or 30 cases of 1990 Latour. And so on. Read more
First Growth Question
Posted: 03:53 AM ET, April 10, 2006
Do you, family or friends ever drink first-growth Bordeaux?
Got in a long conversation last night at dinner with a wine merchant friend from Hong Kong, and he said that first growths were primarily for investment and that few people ever drink the stuff – especially young vintages. Read more
Road Trip Home
Posted: 01:23 PM ET, April 09, 2006
Got back home in Tuscany from VinItaly last night. I spent a whole day in the beautiful city of Verona at what some believe is the Super Bowl of Italian wine. But the only thing the annual event has in common with the great American football event is the crowds. Read more
Road Trip
Posted: 03:48 AM ET, April 07, 2006
After Geneva, flew to Munich to drive down with a friend in his 575 Ferrari to Verona for Italy’s Super Bowl of wine fairs, VinItaly. Parts of the autobahn in Germany still have no speed limit. So we pushed the 575 a bit – very fast.
We stopped in Kufstein, Austria, on the way, the home of Riedel Glass. Read more
Bordeaux Hostage II
Posted: 09:16 AM ET, April 05, 2006
Ran into a fellow "Specy" at the watch show. Robert Woodrow of Rye, New York, was sitting next to me in a lounge area and asked me if I worked for the Spectator. We spoke for a while about wine and watches and then he said he had gone to a restaurant (can’t remember the name) the other night in Geneva and was charged $60 corkage. Read more
Watches and the Nature of the Beast
Posted: 06:56 AM ET, April 05, 2006
Still in Geneva at the Salone International de la Haute Horlogerie – the international watch show. I looked at some cool pieces from Panerai today such as a Radiomir 47mm “California.” It’s a retro look diver’s watch that’s going to be available in the States in December. Read more
Bordeaux Hostage
Posted: 09:29 AM ET, April 03, 2006
Corkage fees can be annoying sometimes. I understand why restaurants charge but sometimes they can be excessive, even dishonest. I had dinner last night at a Chinese restaurant in Geneva called Tse Yan in the Hilton Hotel and I telephoned them before to see if I could bring a bottle of Bordeaux to share with a friend. Read more
Scoop!
Posted: 05:58 AM ET, April 01, 2006
I wasn’t going to blog this but I have decided to unveil what may be the most exciting news to come out of Bordeaux for a long time. While I was tasting in the cellars of Chateau Latour, I came across a barrel that was marked “reserve de patron” – which is basically the reserve of the owner. Read more
Who's on Second?
Posted: 04:48 AM ET, April 01, 2006
I left Bordeaux and went to Basel for the annual watch show – I also write about watches but I don’t rate them – and I had dinner with some friends on Friday night in a Chinese restaurant. We had a couple of bottles of Bordeaux – Les Pagodes de Cos and Leoville Barton 2001. Read more
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