“Well,” I said, slapping my hand playfully on the side of a brand new American oak barrel in the heart of Silver Oak’s nearly-as-new Napa Valley barrel room, the thump resonating through a state-of-the-art stone and steel structure that’s been built to withstand movement from California’s not-infrequent seismic events; “this
It’s clear from breakfast alone that Penfolds isn’t afraid to flaunt success. Visiting Penfolds’ Kalimna vineyard site in Australia’s Barossa Valley, a group of East Coast sommeliers and I were greeted by a vast quantity of mung bean pancakes, spring rolls, Coffin Bay oysters, and 60 degree eggs so large
Boisterous tropical fruit aromas are the hallmark of this lively blend from former IT entrepreneur Jeff Carr and German-born winemaker Rainer Thoma. This is more complex stuff than you might otherwise expect from the price point, with notes of lanolin peeking through. While it's the minority of the blend, the
A recent line of wines from Canyon Wind focused on Bordeaux-style blends, Anemoi Boreas shows what Colorado is capable of when it comes to red wines in favorable vintages. Gritty and full of dark berry fruits and blackcurrant, this is a serious wine what is just starting to integrate its
Former aerospace engineer Brent Helleckson is sitting on near-30-year-old Gewurztraminer vines planted at the second highest elevation vineyard in North America. The result of that fruit is concentrated, lively Gewurz with bracing acidity and nary an ounce of "fat" to drag it down. This wine has a pithy bite that
Quick—what do a former aerospace engineer, a computer tech industry entrepreneur, and a trained geologist who spent most of his career traversing the globe to find rare earth substances all have in common? If you answered “they all now make fine wine in Colorado,” you’d be correct, though chances are
Unless you are Rip Van Winkle, one of those Old Testament characters who lived for a few hundred years, or a really well made bottle of wine, it probably will not take a long time to reach some level of-read more-
Achaval-Ferrer is famed for producing extremely complex—and extremely expensive—Malbec, but their Quimera blend (made from malbec, merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and petit verdot from varying locations and in varying percentages) is a steal even at forty bucks. Quimera is-read more-