Wine of the Week: Vistini Ribolla Gialla Colli Orientali del Friuli 2010

Ribolla Gialla is one of my all-time favorite grapes. It’s also an excellent way to wean your friends off Pinot Grigio. It’s usually more complex and less fruity – tighter and more elegant. That said, Vistini makes an amazing orange-hued(from skin maceration) Pinot Grigio.

One strange thing about this wine is that it gets more intense in the mid-palate, which is the opposite of pretty much every other wine. It might be just a short phase this bottle is going through or a phase that my taste buds are going through as well.

There was an article today at Decanter about an Argentinian wine tasting event that featured Malbec, steak and tango. Malbec, steak and nap sounds more like it for me, but it got me thinking: what other wine, food & dance pairings are there? Here’s my list so far: Wiener Schnitzel – Grüner Veltliner – Waltz [...]

“Everybody knows the blackcurrant bush.” -Le Nez du Vin, Jean Lenoir Blackcurrant is the most common flavor descriptor of the most popular grape variety in the world: Cabernet Sauvignon. At least the British think so. American wine writers tend to use the term cassis, which is French for blackcurrant. You may be asking yourself: wait [...]

On behalf of our crack map team, I apologize for the delay in releasing our California Wine Map. It will now be available March 24th. The saddest part is that the map’s been 99% done for the past month and a half . It’s as if we’re trapped in Zeno’s paradox. Or more aptly, that [...]

Breaking News: The Wine Tasting Notebook Hardbound Version is now available for purchase. An expanded hardbound version of our Wine Tasting Notebook will be in stock this coming Tuesday, December 9th. It has 160 pages with the Wine Tasting Terms as a pullout in the back of the book and will retail for $14.95. If [...]

Update: Wine Map of California is now available. As soon as we released our first wine map – of the Iberian Peninsula – I started getting emails like this: “Dude, when are you going to do a California Map?” For some reason, I was under the impression that a bunch of good California wine maps [...]

The one and only Clark Smith is on the hot seat this week at Enobytes.com. Stop by to ask him any question concerning wine making, the wine industry or just to see the discussion. For those of you who don’t know him, he owns the world’s largest wine consulting company – Vinovation – and is [...]

¿Por qué Iberia? We started with Spain and Portugal for 3 main reasons: It’s the most dynamic (and constantly changing) area in the wine world today There wasn’t a good map currently available (for France there are a few) It’s a great looking land mass! This is simply the only up to date wine map [...]

Move aside Hondarribi Zuri (of Txakolina fame), there’s a new grape in town. We were in New York City last week for a wedding and the 2006 Stadlmann Rotgipfler was one of the wines flowing freely. The newlyweds are serious foodies so their choice of the latest, coolest and most obscure grape variety wasn’t too [...]

Is it Cabernet Sauvignon or cabernet sauvignon? The New York Times and Slate.com don’t capitalize the names of grape varieties but practically everyone else does. What, then, is the correct usage? This may seem a little geeky or pedantic but it’s important for anyone who writes about wine. I seem to revisit this question every [...]

I just got back from a trip to Rome with a bitter taste in my mouth. No, it wasn’t a bad trip or anything like that. It’s just that amazing bitter aftertaste in so many Italian wines both red and white. Is there any country that does bitter better than the land of Campari and [...]