The post “Continuous Legal and Illegal Means” (Exploring New Mexico’s Modern Wine Scene, Part 1) appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. The author, looking even smaller than usual at White Sands A quick warning: this will be a rather long feature post. Also, those with arachnophobia may want to proceed with caution. The rest of you lushes? Welcome to the wines of New Mexico. Longtime 1WD readers already know that I have a penchant for making time for media tours to wine destinations that are not typically traditional wine coverage headline material. Hell, when I finally toured Bordeaux, it was to expl ..read more

The post Get Ready For Some Killer Bulk Wine appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. Given the recent musings here about how ugly the fine wine scene currently is (and is going to get), it feels refreshingly apt to today provide what might be a touch-of-grey silver lining to that (very) dark cloud. Intrepid friend of 1WD Bob Henry (thanks, Bob!) recently alerted me to a handful of news articles covering the glut in wine grape production in California, a phenomenon caused by the unfortunate intersection of decreasing demand and a higher-than-average yield coming from the 2023 harvest. For more detail, y ..read more

The post Wine Reviews: Mini Round-Up for April 8, 2024 appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.   They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), so you can get right to the point and decide if they’re for you (or not). Cheers! NV Celene Amethyste Cremant de Bordeaux Blanc de Noirs Brut (Bordeaux): A lot of fi ..read more

The post Nowhere Left to Hyde (Tasting Mira Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay) appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. Finding a forgotten Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay in your sample pool is kind of like finding spare change in your couch cushions. Only that spare change adds up to, like, $15,000 or something. I was recently lucky enough to have stumbled upon a sample of Mira’s Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay 2016 in my cellar, and I will leave it to the reader to determine what it says about me that I’d forgotten about the existence of a Hyde anything sitting in my possession. As usual, I’m going to blame the fact that ..read more

The post The Cynic’s Guide To Wine Publications appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. [ Editor’s note: This is an April Fool’s Day post. It is intentionally cynical, acerbic, and satirical to the extreme. I do NOT actually feel this way about these publications. I have plenty of friends who work for these publications (all of which, I sincerely hope, take this in the humorous way it’s intended and remain my friends after today. ] Does the panoply of wine magazine offerings confuse you? Do you hate when wine writers use terms like panoply? Do you need someone to tell you what you should think about w ..read more

The post Things Are Going to Get Worse Before They Get Better (Thoughts on SipSource’s 2023 Wine Data) appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. (image: wineindustryadvisor.com) Looks like things are going to get (even) worse for the global wine industry before they get better. My friend Jeff Siegel recently reported on wineindustryadvisor.com about the release of 2023 wine sales data from SipSource (owned by the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association), in a piece titled More Bad News: SipSource Report Pulls No Punches. The numbers paint a picture of wine’s global position that can probably best be ..read more

The post Wine Reviews: Mini Round-Up for March 25, 2024 appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.   They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), so you can get right to the point and decide if they’re for you (or not). Cheers! 2019 Foley Family Brut (Sta. Rita Hills): Flowers, biscuits, and a veritable orcha ..read more

The post Grenache By Any Other Name (Madrevite Recent Releases) appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. Madrevite‘s Nicola Chiucchiurlotto has one of those made-for-TV-movie prodigal son type of stories that seem so prevalent in the wine world. In 2003, Chiucchiurlotto founded Madrevite in Castiglione del Lago, which sits in the hills near lakes Trasimeno and Chiusi, along the Umbria/Tuscany border. In that way, Chiucchiurlotto would seem like a relative newcomer by Italian wine standards (the region has viticultural history dating back to Etruscan times), but his current crop of 11 hectares of vines ..read more

The post Wine Reviews: Mini Round-Up for March 18, 2024 appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.   They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), so you can get right to the point and decide if they’re for you (or not). Cheers! 2020 Monteabellon ’14 Mesas’ Tempranillo (Ribera del Duero): Dark! Lots of cherry ..read more

The post What We Drank: V-Day 2024 appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. When you’ve got a toddler, date nights don’t come easy. Come to think of it,m when you’ve got a toddler, most things don’t come easy. Not that we don’t love the irrepressible little tyke, but some alone adult time helps recharge the parenting batteries, right? Last month for Valentine’s Day, Shannon and I somehow made a date night outing work, getting a dinner alone at one of our favorite local stops, Terrain Cafe. So I raided the media sample pool to see what might be appropriate options to sip along with our finely plated vi ..read more