Berry Crawford's day job is in the web techology field but his off hours are largely spent thinking about or trying food and wine. His is blessed with a beautiful wife and two wounderful daughters. You can reach him at bcrawford [at] wineberserkers.com.
Decanter has an article on the southern Burgundy region’s quest for 1er cru designation: Vineyards in Macon have reached the next stage in their battle for promotion to Premier Cru status. Mathieu Bubel, marketing director of Maison Drouhin, which produces several Maconnais wines within its négociant label, told Decanter.com, ‘Visually, you can tell there are some [...]
NYT’s Eric Asimov discusses the results from a tasting of South African Chenin Blanc: WINE tastings are intended to illuminate, but sometimes confusion gets the upper hand. This was one of those times. The subject was chenin blanc from South Africa, a category I last addressed around five years ago. Back then, I lamented the [...]
The Chronicle has this on Washington state Riesling: Washington’s original wine grape is once again the state’s most dominant variety, both in quality and quantity. While this might seem like old news — great Riesling has been growing in the Columbia Valley for more than a half-century — Washington growers and winemakers continue to find [...]
The Drinks Business website has this news item: The world’s five biggest auction houses have reported a 25% slump during the first half of 2012 as investors adopted a cautious approach to the big names and Chinese buyers shifted their focus towards Burgundy. Despite upbeat reports from many houses, Bloomberg reported that the big five [...]
In his latest post regarding the Rudy Kurniawan saga, Don uncovers more information regarding Eric Greenburg and Acker Merrall. An excerpt: As Maureen succinctly put it: “the physical details of the wines that I rejected matched the physical details of the wines that Mr. Greenberg had given to Acker Merrall. Based on all of that, [...]
The New Your Times has a feature on the southernmost region of Burgundy: THE wines of the Mâconnais region of France are nobody’s idea of a new discovery. Back in the 1980s, when I began drinking a lot of wine, they were a reliable source for fresh, crisp, inexpensive whites, and they have remained so. [...]
I was reading the message board at Wine Berserkers today and came across a thread that was discussing people’s wine epiphanies. I’ve always loved this subject so I began eagerly typing out my answer but as it grew in length I realized that this would be better off as a blog post, so here it [...]
Michael Steinberger has a blog post on 2009 DRC: Aubert de Villaine was in New York two weeks ago to a host tasting of the 2009 vintage from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. It’s an annual event organized by DRC’s longtime U.S. importer, Wilson Daniels, and I’ve now had the pleasure of attending it twice. Truth [...]
Decanter has a news item on Brunello subzones: Lovers of Brunello di Montalcino would benefit if the appellation were to be split into subzones – but it’s politically highly unlikely, Italian experts argue in this month’s Decanter. The terroir varies significantly across the 2000ha of the Montalcino appellation, O’Keefe says. ‘Summertime temperatures can vary by [...]
Matt Kramer has an article on wine etiquette at Wine Spectator: The dinner party started smoothly and we all seemed to be enjoying ourselves. But when the first wine, which our hosts were quite proud of, appeared at the table it was unmistakably (to me, anyway) corked. But nobody said anything. Here lies the dilemma: [...]
The Wine Spectator has a news story about rising California grape prices: California’s grapegrowers finally have something to cheer about—grape prices are going up. But does that mean higher prices for consumers? Winery owners are trying to cut costs so they can keep prices low at a time when drinkers still want value. After nearly [...]
Wine Spectator reports on another loss to the Napa wine community: When California vintners wanted know the history of their property or cellar, they often turned to William F. Heintz. A historian who lived most of his adult life in Sonoma, Heintz wrote two detailed books on Napa, Wine Country: A History of Napa Valley, [...]
Wine Spectator has a news item on the passing of Ernest Van Asperen: In a wine career that spanned more than five decades, Ernest “Ernie” Van Asperen blazed his own trail. He was involved in all aspects of the industry, and his résumé read vintner, retailer, négociant and restaurateur. Van Asperen was an avid flyer [...]
For those that do not know Lapierre makes a sulfur and non-sulfur version of their Morgan (maybe other cuvees too?). I bought a bottle of each and was interested in trying them side by side. When I first opened them they both had reduction with The “N” (non-sulfur) version having more but the “S” version [...]
I think it is fair to say that the most passionate group of wine geeks are Burgundy Geeks. Given this enthusiasm, it is no surprise that the annual La Paulee celebration hosted and produced by Daniel Johnnes is one of the most anticipated wine events every year in this country. Even months before the event, [...]
A true wine geek goes through the following spiritual stages:
Obviously I am kidding but if I am honest with myself I’m often too quick to a judgment about a vintage or producer based on too little data. I think its a symptom of my over-analytical mind always working overtime to try and find patterns in the chaos of the universe. The wine I am [...]