How to Hold a World Class Wine Tasting Event
I go to a lot of big, public and trade-only wine tastings, some of which are great, and others of which are lousy. Some are bad because they don’t have good wines, others are bad because they’re poorly organized, which amazes me, because it doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to get right. But maybe no one has ever really defined what makes for a great public wine tasting event. Given that my “day job” is helping companies improve their customers’ experiences and my “night job” here at Vinography is blabbering about wine, perhaps it’s time for me…
Quite simply, to make good wine
My comparison between the «creative anxieties» of winegrowers and those of a painter has triggered off a passionate debate on LPV (la Planète-Vin), one of the cybernauts wonders – and I wonder – what would I do with a parcel of Aramon on a terroir suitable for artichokes/asparagus. If you don’t have the time to [...]
2005, the year of cross-breeding
No, I am not going to talk to you about Prince Albert. Even though, if I believe an article I gleaned from le Figaro, photographs of a handsome chubby baby on the cover of Paris-Match, can multiply the readership of a newspaper. Perhaps that would also work with a blog…
No, I have simply been [...]
Jean Guyon makes a Box…
One of the events at Vinexpo, was the presentation by Jean Guyon, owner of Château Rollan de By, in the Mèdoc, of his range of Bag-in-Box, humorously entitled ‘Bacchus Box®’ (one wonders why no one thought of it before…) 7 products, very fancy, designed by a German fashion house Escada (it was sufficient to observe [...]
And, you, young’un, taste my wine!
OK, I laugh at the title, but for the rest, well done. After several minutes visiting the site of e-motif (http://bordeaux.ecritel.net/index.php*), a mega-fun initiative of the organisation of young winemakers [Commission 'jeunes vignerons'] from some all-embracing structure in Bordeaux of which I know nothing, I tell myself that there is only one real idea, one [...]
Perna perexuctus San Daniele
My interest in ‘prosciutto crudo di San Daniele’ was first kindled by an ageing Italian diplomat. I was staying with some friends in Tuscany and on the lunch table was a large plate of prosciutto crudo (the word prosciutto is derived from the Latin perexuctus meaning ‘deprived of all liquid’). This type of ham [...]
The day of the fake
Well, it’s slightly off the point but the day before yesterday, whilst looking at various subjects about Thailand, including the winding road of fraudulent imitation, I thought these pictures might be amusing…
Bangkok. Opposite the hotel where we were organising a tasting, a drab supermarket, open 24 hours a day. I had forgotten my washbag [...]
AOCE and AOCM
Yesterday evening I went to my first trade association meeting. The AOC association «Côtes de Roussillon» was getting together in order to validate the project of re-writing the rules of the Appellation within the framework of the big reform launched by Monsieur Renè Renou. I don’t know if one day we will have these famous [...]
Memorial Day Weekend in Los Angeles with Legendary Wines from Bouchard’s Cellar
I actually headed out to L.A. the Sunday of the weekend after relaxing in the Hamptons for a couple days. My close friend Rob of the Angry Men happened to be out there for his birthday a couple days earlier; if I had known the trail of empty bottles that he and Rudy were going [...]