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Decanter: Maconnais pushes for Premier Crus

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 [...]

Asimov: Chenin Blancs That Aren’t What They Used to Be

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 [...]

SFGate: Riesling, the greatest of the grapes?

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 [...]

Drinks Business: Bordeaux slump hits auction figures

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 [...]

More Investigation from Don Cornwell

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, [...]

NYT: The Mâconnais, Poised for Rediscovery

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. [...]

Decanter: Veuve Clicquot launches La Grande Dame 2004

Decanter has a news item on the release of La Grande Dame 2004. Veuve Clicquot has launched the 2004 vintage of its top cuvée La Grande Dame – with chef de cave Dominique Demarville suggesting that future vintages could contain a much higher proportion of Pinot Noir. La Grande Dame is Veuve Clicquot’s prestige cuvée. [...]

WS: French Insurance Firm Buys Bordeaux’s Calon-Ségur

The Wine Spectator has a news item of a major purchase in Bordeaux. The purchase includes 235 acres in St.-Estèphe, encompassing Calon-Ségur, second label Marquis de Calon and a cru bourgeois property, Capbern-Gasqueton. This is the most prominent of several Bordeaux properties to recently change hands, largely due to inheritance taxes and family disagreements. Click [...]

Wine Diarist: Domaine de la Romanée-Conti 2009

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 [...]

Brunello subzones desirable but unlikely, say experts

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 [...]