The printer is silent. All mailers have gone to the Post with Follow-Up emails sent. It must be time to make the 2007 Butterdragon Hill Cabernet Sauvignon offer to the public. Visit http://www.matchvineyards.com/order.shtml to learn more.
Continue reading about 2007 Match Butterdragon Hill Offer now online.
2004 Bodega Asenjo & Manso Ribera del Duero Silvanus – Spain, Castilla y León, Ribera del Duero (2/13/2010)
Fruit and earth aromas explode from the glass. Extremely rich and sweet mouthfeel: dried cherries, ripe plums, bacon, cranberry(?), freshly-plowed wet earth. Liberal use of toasty oak but not off-putting in this package. Balanced. Just a touch of rustic character links a modern wine making style with simple vino tinto roots. Unfortunately wine-searcher doesn’t show any availability because this one would tempt me. About $60 from a pricey restaurant wine list but I’d say it would be worth that retail. Excellent with a wonderful future. 92+ (92 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker on GrapeStories.com
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I have been thinking about Brixr for awhile now. I was intrigued when I first saw the initial press release last year.
My first thought was that companies like Inertia Beverage Group or even Southern Wine & Spirits should be jumping on this opportunity.
Brixr takes a 750 ml bottle of wine and transforms it into about 14 tiny sample bottles, complete with miniature labels.
Because I work in the wine business, I immediately thought of the industry applications.
Ideas like virtual trade tastings with wine buyers across the country. Or even having distributor wine reps sent out with these tiny samples, instead of the 750 ml bottles.
Each buyer gets a fresh sample and gets to see the visuals of the regular wine label at the same time. Less wastage, more efficiency and greater reach.
A very savvy example of how to utilize virtual trade tastings has been displayed By Israeli Wine Direct. The owner, Richard Shaffer, has seen success with online and/or phone tastings with trade buyers that are thousands of miles away and have never met him. It’s simple, he sends them samples and sets time to do a web conference or phonecall with the trade buyer. Afterwards, they place an order. Richard is now running a pilot program with a run of tiny sample bottles from Brixr.
Seems as if Brixr is more interested in reaching out to the consumer with this concept.
A wine lover can order a sample pack on the Brixr website. Either that is the end of the transaction, or even better perhaps that consumer then orders a full bottle or case of one of the wines they sampled.
But I wonder, will a wine consumer really adopt the above buying behavior? Trade buyers are disciplined about sampling product and then making a buying commitment.
Will the sample packs in themselves be of interest to the average wine lover? Maybe.
But will they be enough to get them to return to Brixr’s website and order full bottles or cases of said wine? I am not so sure of that. It would represent a significant shift in the buying experience for wine consumers.
Continue reading about Virtual Wine Tastings; for Trade or Consumer?
2007 Green & Red Vineyards Zinfandel Chiles Canyon – USA, California, Napa Valley (2/15/2010)
This wine would have never been on my radar screen but I was about to pick another Zin from a restaurant wine list and the waiter recommended this one instead. He said it was drinking fantastically right now. He was right. Round sweet cherry with some wood smoke, bacon fat, a dash of pepper, and cloves. A fleshy, mouth filling wine without being heavy. Very understated for a Zin and excellent complement to the varied dishes around the table. About 50 bucks on the 350 Main (Park City) wine list seems like a deal. (90 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker on GrapeStories.com
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| Mike Ratcliffe as Robert Downey. |
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| WOSA, Shirely?? |
Now I’ll never get in. At least if anyone pays attention to Gayot.com (the self-proclaimed “Guide to the Good Life”) and MSN.com
Bardessano (Yountville) makes list of 10 Best New Restaurants in the US.
What is the best restaurant in your town?
Can’t believe it is already March, unfortunately I’m not all that surprised that I have yet to close out my “2009 Year in Wine” series. I have a few resolutions but want to focus on one here: start spending more time writing about wines (or topics) I enjoy. Upon reflection I realized there [...]
March 2010, Wine of the Month 2006 Winemaker’s Selection Pinot Noir Save 25% when you buy a 4-Pack 4 bottles for only $120 Try it before you buy it in the tasting room! 2006 Winemaker’s Selection Pinot Noir is included on the Reserve Flight Reserve Flight tasting fee is only $10 (Refunded with a $50+ purchase) All tastings are complimentary for Wine Club Members Interested in how this wine is produced? Click here to view a tech sheet for the 2006 Winemaker’s Selection Pinot Noir Try pairing your 2006 Winemaker’s Selection Pinot Noir with some of these delicious matches: Garlic and Rosemary Steak Tagliatelle with Duck Confit Sauteed Wild Mushrooms Crusty Bread with Chevre and Black Cherry Chutney Pork Chops with Caramelized Cippolini Onions Some nice things people have said about our 2006 Winemaker’s Selection Pinot Noir 90 Points -…
This is the first of what I hope will be many updates straight from our winemaker Cary Gott. We’re trying something new: since Cary is a busy guy who rarely spends time writing at a desk, he recorded a voice memo on his iPhone, emailed it to me, and I have transcribed it. If you’d like to “hear” more from Cary, please take a moment to click on “Like” or comment. And please let us know if there are topics you’d like Cary to talk about in the future.
From Cary:
I’m going to be racking the ‘09 Cabernets next week. So what we’re doing right now is I’ve got them [Bin to Bottle -- where we custom crush our wine] set up to have the barrels down on Tuesday afternoon and we’re going to rack it on Wednesday. I’ll taste every barrel and make sure everything is fine. Once the wine’s in tank, we’ll take a big sample of it and send it off [to ETS laboratories] for full analysis plus Scorpion [test for wine spoilage microbes] and adjust the SO2 and then go back to barrel. So it’s a very gentle process. This will be the first racking for the ’09s.
Continue reading about Winemaker Cary Gott discusses racking the 2009 vintage wines
This one is going to be short and sweet, but it’s been building for a while.
For me, interacting with people in the social space, blogosphere, twitter world, whatever you want to call it, is, for the most part, about good conversation with people I find to be interesting, add something to the conversation and, above all, are authentic about their involvement. So, it is with some dismay that I still continue to see comments left on my blog by the ever ubiquitous “Anonymous.” The even worse part is that most of the time, comments left by “Anonymous” always tend toward the negative or, at the very least, not constructive.
I have a filter on my blog that allows me to moderate comments before posting, so I can cut out any profanity, hate or anything truly distasteful. For the record, I have never declined a comment left on my blog, nor do I have any intention to. However, as of late, it’s been with great resolve that I’ve let “Anonymous” commenters through with rants about what they believe to be all the ills of the wine world.
My plea to all you “Anonymous’s” out there – I’m more than happy to engage in meaningful conversation with you, but I’d take it a lot more seriously and everyone would get a lot more out of it if you just owned up to who you are.
Question: anyone else feel the same way or is it just me?
