I was under the impression the Obama’s had a 1000 btl cellar at home.
Speaking of holding a wine glass.
Now they’re accused of serving “cheap wine”…
IMO, this is one of the best wines produced in VA and as you said an excellent pick for the theme as well as the fact they visited Monticello.
This looks almost like aggressive toasting.
Yet they didn’t pick any Gruet for the bubbly?
I thought I read that his house (pre-White House, obviously) had a 1500 bottle cellar. I could be misremembering.
I’d say this, as we wine geeks know, there are a lot of great wines for moderate prices if you know where to look. You could serve a lineup of excellent wines that cost $40-70 a bottle.
Agreed, I thought the guy saying that was being a bit of a jerk.
It is turning into quite the kerfuffle over at Dr. Vino. I’m working on the movie version, out soon, I hope.
Mike
I’m not concerned with the wines from the White House dinner, but more worried about the ‘se’ on the end of your name!!
Indeed. A veritable lynch mob of touchy and self-absorbed Walla Wallabies have e-hung poor Dr. Vino, whose body now lies a-mouldering in the e-grave. While I understand the local pride that goes along with eating chili every Thursday night with the winemaker whose wine made it to the dinner table in the White House, and being 400% behind supporting and growing regional and local wine industries, the e-crucifixion of a generally mild and well-behaved blogger like Tyler Colman for the quite true observation that better American wines were available than those served at the White House was entirely unjustified and uncalled for. The provincialism exhibited by many on that thread does the Washington wine industry a disservice and makes me think that perhaps the White House would be better served by offering wines from around the world rather than having this sort of hooliganism, barely shy of what one sees in European football stadia, break out over an inexpensive, relatively unknown and possibly not very good bottle of wine simply because the winemaker is a great guy, hard worker and good neighbor…
John, let he who has not seen nude pix of that hot young tootsy cast the first stone! (Understanding that it could be you. If so, I will PM you a couple of links! 
) And after all, the guy IS French, and has an image to uphold. I think that Clinton may have secretly longed to be French as well, certainly after, if not before, the Monica thing…
My take on Dr. Vino’s post is that he missed the point. The wine selection was about symbolism, not the best or most expensive wines America has to offer. Could they have picked better examples of the French winemaker in the US theme? Yes, to my palate, but that’s a minor quibble.
I may be qualified to cast stones here. For us non-cognoscenti, who is this winemaker and hot young tootsie? That may be more interesting than the State Dinner wines.
Sorry, I was thinking of Hollande’s hot younger-but-still-41 tootsy…
As a writer, it is generally a good idea to have tasted the wines you are referencing (and in Tyler’s post, dismissing). I am not sure what drives his fascination with the wine selections for WH state dinners. It isn’t that he has not shown he is a well regarded blogger on subjects where he has experience but this one turned incendiary very quickly. His vacancy from the thread is palpable as it is being gnawed on furiously by a loyalist. Be merciful, Tyler, and shut it down… A great celebration of improving on how we write and Napa wine starts this week!
I just read through all of the posts on Dr.Vino, only because of the drama admittedly.
I also read the initial Blog post and to be honest I have no idea where all the vitriol spews from. I didn’t see it as damning nor as being that condescending. I think that many people that post need to ‘toughen up’ because if they read anything that may be derogatory, they lose there marbles.
I think the bigger issue is that many people that stand up for Washington wine (as those people are) rarely if ever drink wines that come from outside of the region or have not tried many examples of the same grapes from the rest of the world.
I’m not discounting their enthusiasm for Washington wines but they have very little perspective.
Daniel was being very reasonable but it’s hard to rationalize with people that are not very well educated on the subject and solely believe what they believe.
I have met many people from Washington and they wouldn’t be drinking wine if it wasn’t grown/made here. Again, it’s not a bad thing per se to like what you like, but when you go out on the internet and espouse your point of view when it is singular and uneducated then it turns into an issue.
Well-said, Jason…
Wow, what a mess on the blog about the WH dinner. It is kind of funny that all those people are going nuts defending Washington state wines. They have some nice wines, I would even say very good. I am no great admirer of Cali wines but they are far in front of WA for wine and I have tasted very little to make me think that it will ever change. It is a little closer, but I still see Oregon in front of WA by a good margin.