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I can’t recall my first trip wine trip to Austria, it was somewhere in the early to mid 1990’s, at the cajoling of Alois Krahcer 1959-2007 (one of the worlds greatest dessert wine makers) he insisted I visit him after VIN Italy, so I did.I drove to Illmitz and it is there, with his wife Michaela, we had a four hour extravaganza dinner were he must have opened and poured 30 wines. Te next day we were up an arm touring the wineries of Burgenland and my absolute respect for Austrian winesThis trip

Several years ago, I attended a bloggers conference in Walla Walla. At one of the final sit down events there was a panel discussion, two of the writers were Lettie Teague and James Conway, two superlative writers who have paid their dues. There were a couple of others but I can’t recall their names.The room was full of young people, keen about wine but more keen on how to monetize their blog.I sat at the table, kept quiet, yes, I know this is hard for me, and listened to their questions h

All of us in the wine business are looking for the next; next hot producer, next hot region.I just returned from a Greek wine seminar and tasting in Seattle, WOW is the only word I can think of.All of the aforementioned are wound up in Greek wines. Unique, small growers, organic, low alcohol, work with food, a quarter of the price of wines from more popular areas, educated wine makers, old vines, what is not to like.Right in front of our noses, we just have to sniff bit harder.

On Friday May 11th2016 I had the distant pleasure of attending a port tasting lead by Rupert Symington. The premise of the event was to taste the their line up of 2016 Ports which was a general declared vintage, the last time there was a general vintage was 2011.Before I continue with my tasting notes I would like to point out that Rupert Symington told our group they usually hold back 25% of the vintage for re-release. However, 2016 was 25% less in volume than 2011 and 2011 was 35% less

I get a lot of people asking me why does this Bordeaux or that Burgundy cost so much more, while I can get a similar wine from someplace else?The answer is easy, there are a lot of very good to great wines from other regions but when you are talking the best in any given category here is what I tell my clients.You can go buy a 2500+ square foot house in Beverly Hills or Shaughnessy and it will cost a certain amount of money, a lot of money. You can go buy the same size house in the suburbs