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A new word for the New Year, just don't call it cheap Champagne. But, whether you know what Prosecco is or not, chances are very good you'll have some New Year's Eve.
Prosecco is generally a dry Italian sparkling wine made from the grape variety Glera which is grown in the Veneto region of Italy. Up until the 1960s, Prosecco sparkling wine was basically rather sweet and barely distinguishable from the Asti Spumante wine produced in Piedmont. Since then, production techniques have improved, leading to the higher quality dry wines produced today.
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Tagsasti spumante wine, Champagne, cheap champagne, France, french champagne, italian sparkling wine, Italian wine, Italy, mionetto, Prosecco, prosecco frizzante, Rich Prosecco, sparkling wine, veneto region
Posted in Sparkling Wine, Wine Trends
1) The Vinturi Essential Wine Aerator:
Tired of decanting wine and waiting for an hour for your wine to be
just right? Well, the
Vinturi Wine Aerator is quickly supplanting the old decanter and wine funnel routine. Not only does it take less time to "open up" your wines, now you can decant as needed or by the glass. Vinturi makes aerators for both red and white wines. Traditionalists might be in an uproar, but if you're dealing with a crabby oenophile, just let them do a taste test. The Vinturi Wine Aerator outperforms in wine tasting after wine tasting, its effect is unmistakable. However, this wine tool is used to best effect on wines that need aeration (see this link for an
explanation of the practice of wine aeration). For one-hand operation get the optional Vinturi Tower. It should also be noted that the wine aerator has a tendancy to overflow if you're not paying attention and to drip when not in use, another reason to get the Tower or the Deluxe Gift Set.
Price: Under $40.
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Tagsaeration, America's Test Kitchen, Bordeaux, Cook's Illustrated, corkscrew, decanting wine, electric wine bottle opener, Italian wine, Italy, Joseph Bastianich, Lidia Bastianich, Mario Batali, Oprah, Oster, wine aerator, wine pourer, wine stopper, Wine Tasting
Posted in Wine Trends
A bottle of Madeira was probably poured at some of the earliest Thanksgiving celebrations. Madeira is produced on a beautiful volcanic island of the same name which is 360 miles west of Morocco and 700 miles south of Portugal, which governs it. The history of Madeira’s wine is nearly as old as that of the island. The island was first settled by Europeans (led by the Portuguese explorer Zarco) in 1419. By 1455 a visitor from Venice wrote that Madeira’s vineyards were the world's most beautiful. Within a century, the wine from these vineyards was well established in markets throughout Europe and by the 1600’s it had become the most popular wine in Britain’s North American colonies.
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TagsAncellotta, bual, fortified wine, George Washington, Indicazione Geografica Tipica, Italy, Lambrusco, Madeira wine, malmsey, Malvasia, Napoleon, Portugal, thanksgiving celebrations, Tinta Negra Mole, verdelho
Posted in Wine Price and Sales
We all know the Bible story of Jesus turning water into wine, but in the desert, water is the one thing you don't have and must pay an arm and a leg to get if you ever hope to produce wine. Winemaking in the desert may very well require turning "Blood Into Wine" ( as suggested by the title of
Tool and
A Perfect Circle front-man Maynard James Keenan's documentary), and the results may be just as ghastly. So, why would anybody want to grow wine in the desert when there are so many other well-established wine-producing areas?
First, young wine drinkers and sommeliers want the new and obscure. For example, Lagrein red wine grapes from the Italian region of Alto Adige which borders Austria is rare to the point of obscurity and growing in popularity. Patagonia in Argentina however, is both a new wine producing region and obscure. After all, Patagonia is synonymous with Mandalay or Timbuktu, a metaphor for the ultimate or the ends of the Earth. Who doesn't want a souvenir from the edge of the known world?
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TagsArgentina Wine, Arizona Wine, Blood Into Wine, Bodega del Fin del Mundo, Bodega Noemia, irrigation, local economy, Malbec, Maynard James Keenan, Patagonia, Pinot Noir, sustainability, terroir, winemaking
Posted in Wine Trends
Is it just me, or are cupcakes (or more precisely cupcake sellers) everywhere? Cupcakes are suddenly everybody's favorite dessert and every baker wannabe is trying to sell them. And if a budding entrepreneur is not selling them directly, they're trying to brand a product with the name to take advantage of the uptrend.
It all started with
Sex & the City and NYC's Magnolia Bakery. As
Sex & the City's rabid fans tried to be more like
Carrie and the girls and Magnolia gained exposure on tv and in the movies, it started a gourmet cupcake feeding frenzy.
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Tagscalifornia central coast, Cupcake Vineyards, dolores jane umbridge, harry potter and the order of the phoenix, magnolia bakery, New York City, Sex & the City, Twitter, Wine
Posted in Wine Trends
It's HOT! In fact, climatologists predict that 2010 will be the hottest year on record worldwide, due in large part to El Nino, the tropical climate pattern that warms the Pacific every five to seven years. But, that didn't stop the folks at the Finger Lakes Wine Festival this weekend in Watkins Glen, NY. In fact the Finger Lakes are doing very well in the heat. Winemakers in the region are enjoying advanced ripening in the vineyards this year, compared to the wet, challenging season of 2009. More time on the vine in hot, dry weather may give winemakers a chance to quiet a few more critics of Finger Lakes red wine. But, it's doing great things for Riesling.
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Tagschateau ste michelle, finger lakes wine, finger lakes wine festival, global warming, music, New York, Reisling, Seattle, sweet wines, watkins glen international, watkins glen ny, Wine Tasting, winemaking
Posted in Wine Tasting
Forget about
wine cellar equipment for their McMansions, the super rich have an underground wine vault 100ft under the Wiltshire countryside in Southern England. Formerly Eastlays mine, a source of honey-colored Bath stone, it is now Octavian Vaults's Corsham Cellars, the place where the rich and famous hoard their most precious bottles of Petrus, Lafite or Latour. It's like a bank storing liquid gold and run by one of the world’s relatively few specialist
wine storage companies. Octavian Vaults is the only place you can get a "Certificate of Pristine Storage".
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TagsBordeaux, Bordeaux Wine, corsham, precious bottles, provenance, security measures, southern england, storage companies, storage conditions, Wiltshire, Wine, Wine Cellar, wine cellar equipment, wine cellars, wine storage, wine storage facility, wine vault
Posted in Wine Cellar
On top of the immensity of the Olympic Winter Games, it appears the Canadians are planning an after party of equally biblical proportions. Thanks to Andre Saint-Jacques, owner of the Bearfoot Bistro and its extravagant underground
wine cellar of more than 20,000 bottles (a perennial winner of the Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence), the Champagne will flow freely for gold medal winners. And to make things even more thrilling, the Champagne bottles will be ceremoniously decapitated by Saint-Jacques himself - the Guinness World Record holder for most Champagne bottles sabred in a single minute (21).
Opening a Champagne bottle with a sword or saber by hitting the lip of the bottle (its weak point) with the blade, thereby severing the collar from the neck is called "Sabrage" and dates back to the Napoleonic Era. Napoleon was quite the lover of Champagne and is credited with saying, "Champagne! In victory one deserves it; in defeat one needs it." Saint-Jacques, also an effusive lover of the bubbly is Canada's No. 1 importer of Moet & Chandon.
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TagsAndre Saint-Jacques, Bearfoot Bistro, biblical kings, biblical proportions, Canada, Champagne, champagne bottle, champagne bottles, gold medal winners, gold medalists, guinness world record, guinness world record holder, jeroboam, jeroboams, large-format wine bottles, magnums, Moet and Chandon, Moët et Chandon, Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte, olympic games, olympic medalists, olympic winter games, sabrage, salmanazar, Whistler B.C., Wine Cellar, wine spectator, Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence, winter games 2010
Posted in Champagne, Moet and Chandon, Wine Cellar
