Corks and Caftans

  It’s gonna be a hell of a night! We sat down today, tasted through a bunch of Bonny Doon wines, found our lineup and brought them to the chef. We re-tasted, hashed out flavors and combinations, and Chef Sam did what he does best. The pairings will be sensational, and if you live in [...]

Real, high-quality Chablis is a balm to the soul…unadorned, unbejewelled, in a white wine world where alcohol and oak are too much ascendant…Chablis prides itself on minerality. This wine demonstrates what the word means. -Oz Clark on the 2011 Domaine VD Premier Cru ‘Côte de Léchet Man, I love that quote. And more so, in [...]

It’s an exciting time for wine in the New World. I’m not going say a revolution is in the works, but we are seeing some encouraging signs. Enough winemakers are willing to make wines a little differently and enough people are willing to buy those wines—and that’s all it takes. A new generation of winemakers [...]

Burgundy is complicated: the wine, the geography, the influence of vintage. Thankfully, there are some basic guidelines to follow. Burgundy is divided into a north, and a south; Pinot Noir is the heartbeat of the reds, Chardonnay of the whites. The most sought-after Pinot Noir is considered to be a product of  the north, or [...]

First post from my iPhone! Last week at Barrel Thief we launched our first annual Pinot Noir tasting. Prior to the Pinot tasting our yearly lineup included a Spring Rosé tasting, a holiday sparkling wine/Champagne blowout, and a no-Nouveau Beaujolais experience. After little debate, Pinot noir was added to the mix and 10 wines from [...]

From my favorite wine store I’ve never been to, 3 Cups, in Chapel Hill North Carolina: Sainte Croix du Mont is a lesser-known appellation of eastern Bordeaux. The region exists literally across the river from (but figuratively in the shadow of) Sauternes, the most well-known and probably greatest of French dessert wine producing regions. On [...]

And it almost didn’t happen. As of Thursday, Barrel Thief added a pretty special bottle of wine to the inventory, a 2005 Coche-Dury Corton-Charlemagne. This one doesn’t go on the shelf though, nor does it leave its cardboard box and styrofoam shell, with the exception of a picture and some light fondling, of course.

After powering through a 6-course sparkling wine dinner hosted by The Barrel Thief for our favorite customers, then some party time/ball drop time with a little 1990 Jean Bourdy Côtes du Jura (It took Kylie, a loyal BT team member, about 10 minutes upon return to work yesterday to notice that we drank her birth [...]

After letting my phone spend a day on a shelf at Lowe’s [right where I left it, safely tucked away, ringing w/ incessant calls from Carey], with all my pictures of harvest 2012 still not downloaded, I realized how many great things I still had to share. It wasn’t until I really started reflecting on [...]

The French do do. Be chic, be coy, be funny. Know food, know faux, and by all means, know wine. And considering Gigi was my favorite movie growing up [my mother, in her infinite wisdom, almost always reserved it for my days spent at home, sick from school, under an afghan with a cup of [...]

[A trip to Zivo Vineyard, one of my favorite days so far. It was hot, hazy and windy. The fruit was just starting to show signs of the excess beautiful weather with a bit of shrivel and high sugar levels.] The hardest part about being here (besides being away from home) is the constant race [...]

It’s hard to believe I’ve been here for 3 weeks. We were anticipating a mellow mushroom harvest—good weather, drawn out picking, and a low pressure situation in the winery. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The rains never came, the sun never stopped shining, and the nights remained warm. Fruit was ripening at a staggering [...]