A Sense of Time and Place – Early Purity and Elegance

Flowers in bloom are tough to come by in New Jersey this time of year.  Though it has been a mild winter, most of the shoots and growth we see thus far will… Continue reading →

What’s in Your Wine? Andrew Jefford Weighs In

The week before last, I wrote about the shortfalls with ingredient labeling for wine.  Since there aren’t labeling requirements for wine (besides the vague ‘contains sulfites’) in the United States, it’s up to wine… Continue reading →

Organically Grown Grapes and What Else?

This entry is not intended to be an attack on the vineyard or winery practices of a particular winery, but instead an open question into the short-comings associated with listing ingredients of wine… Continue reading →

What Some Will Never Understand About Expressive Wine

Though technically true, wine has never been nor will ever be as simple as grapes + yeast = alcohol and carbon dioxide.  All finished wines are manipulated at some level.  One can go… Continue reading →

Sense of Time and Place – Txakoli and Daffodils

Txakoli – not one place, but three different regions in the Basque Country of Northern Spain where white, red and rose are produced in a fairly separatist fashion.  For today’s exercise, the whites… Continue reading →

We Prefer Natural Wine Because They are Real

Excuse my brevity, but I ran a little under 7 miles tonight and have a few books on the wines of Portugal on my lap while watching the Indiana/Michigan men’s basketball game. Tonight… Continue reading →

What is Minerality? The First Part of a Modest Inquiry

What does it mean for a wine to have a component that expresses minerality?  Those who support the notion that minerality exists believe that it manifests itself in the aromas and flavors of… Continue reading →

Why Proposed Privatization Effort In Pennsylvania is a Sham

In the summer of 2010, I appeared on the Fox Business Network to engage PJ Stapleton, Chairman of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board in a debate over the installation of wine kiosks in… Continue reading →

Philosophical Approach to Place – Brettanomyces

A number of tweets, Facebook posts and blog posts are sprouting up with reactions to the recent Decanter piece on scientists cracking the genetic code for Brett.  Many writers, bloggers and winemakers have… Continue reading →

European Union Looks to Deepen Its Wine Lake

This morning, over coffee and a wonderfully crisp apple, I read through the headlines from the various RSS feeds that come through my inbox.  Among the articles that caught my eye was a… Continue reading →