VINEgeek

Where is Kokomo? The Beach Boys made us all think there is some beautiful island named Kokomo somewhere in the vicinity of Aruba or Jamaica (“Ooo, I wanna take ya”), or Bermuda or the Bahamas (“come on, pretty mama”). Well, it ain’t true. They made it up. There is a real place named Kokomo, but [...]

This wine is from Brancott’s “Letter Series” – their upper tier range of wines. Price: around $25 This wine was provided as a sample for review by the winery’s PR agency.

Price: Around $25 Image link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dobrych/4552132976/ ————– I’m experimenting with this new review format. I thought it would be cool to take the free association image I would typically insert in a post and give it more impact by making it the primary feature, with the text for bottle info (just the basics) and my tasting [...]

“Rising from the Sonoma terroir like the weathered fists of century-old men, these 100+ year old vines have seen history.” [from the winery's website] Producer: Wine Guerrilla Grapes: A field blend (yay!) of around 95% Zin and the rest a mix of Carignan, Petite Sirah, Alicante Bouchet. Appellation: Dry Creek Valley (AVA, California) Vineyard: Forchini [...]

Way back in October, Wines of Chile held a twitter tasting of red blends from Chile (hashtag: #ChileBlends). I had signed up for the tasting and received the wine, but a family emergency kept me from being able to participate on the night of the event. That also coincided with this blog going into a [...]

When I saw “Niellucciu” named as the grape on the back label — which looks to me more like a Scrabble rack than any grape variety I’d ever hear of — I bought first and asked questions later. Back home, Oz Clarke’s Grapes and Wines — a must-own book in my opinion — revealed to [...]

I’ve been meaning to devote more attention to Bandol in the Mourvèdre Monday series. Bandol, after all, is the only appellation in France where Mourvèdre is the top dog grape (it must be a minimum of 50% of the blend). So I was very excited when I was recently followed on Twitter by @BandolWines and [...]

This is a special Wednesday edition of my yearlong Mourvèdre Monday series. I was very excited to see that this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday #69 theme was the Mourvèdre grape, chosen and hosted by The Passionate Foodie (click through to learn why the sub-title is “Animal Cruelty”). So I decided to delay my regularly scheduled [...]

This wine was shared with me by Mike Castleman, whom I met via Twitter. He heard about my Mourvèdre Monday series and recommended this wine to me. When we realized we were both in Austin, we planned to meet up and taste it together. Thanks, Mike!  I’ll have to return the favor soon. (Mike makes [...]

Mourvèdre Monday is back after a few weeks off around the birth of my baby girl, Lucy. I’m easing back into regular blogging. Let’s get things restarted with a bang… This is one of the priciest varietal Mourvèdres on the planet. So I’m glad to be able to include it in the Mourvèdre Monday series. [...]