The post Pokémon Power, Aussie Style (Fowles Victoria Recent Releases) appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. Welcome to the third installment of my three-parter on the wines of Austraila’s Victoria region (if you missed them, catch up on Part 1 and Part 2). Today, I’m featuring one of Victoria’s hundreds of family-run producers, Fowles Wine. In April of 2024, I had the pleasure of attending a media dinner at Philly’s Sampan with Matt Fowles, the main guy behind Fowles Wine, which sits just to the east of VIctoria’s mountains, where it sees a Continental-style climate that’s somewhat mitigated by the ..read more

The post The Recent, from the Prehistoric (Victoria Wines, Part 1) appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. Over the last half of 2024, I’ve had the good fortune to be able to attend three tasting events (two of them virtual) for the media, exploring the wines of Victoria, Australia. Longtime friends of 1WD will recall that I spent a good amount of time in that diverse region several years ago, and it’s been a blast getting reacquainted with its wines. So much so, in fact, that I’m going to run a three-parter here, starting with today’s feature, on Victoria’s varied wine scene. Victoria is in the far s ..read more

The post Hope Springs Eternal (Tasting Flora Springs Flagship Releases) appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. Each year, almost without fail, I receive samples of Flora Springs‘ Napa Valley wines, usually including their flagship white (“Soliloquy”) and red (“Trilogy”). And yet, I’ve never really featured their wines here, even after a decade-plus. Which is a shame, because they are arguably better than ever. It’s time to rectify that oversight, friends. Flora Springs’ proprietors, Nat and John Komes, recently (in 2019), decided to downsize their operation, selling their St. Helena winery and keepin ..read more

The post Hard Work, Hard Rock, and Desperation: G.D. Vajra Recent Releases appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. (image: G.D. Vajra) For several years now, I have often wondered why the wines of Piedmont’s G.D. Vajra don’t rake in 98+ points like, all the time. Sometimes I think that the major critics just don’t “get” what these wines are all about. Which seems even stranger, now that I think of it, considering that it took me all of just one tasting at VinItaly to absolutely “get” their wines. Anyway… I was more than happy to attend a tasting of samples of G.D. Vajra’s recent releases, virtually led ..read more

The post Wine Reviews: Mini Round-Up for June 24, 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 Bodegas Ruiz De Viñaspre Seleccionada Tinto (Rioja): A bit gritty but still plent ..read more

The post More Tannin, More Cows: Revisiting Uruguayan Tannat appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. At this point, 1WD readers are probably sick of me mentioning my previous trip to Uruguay and the obligatory capybara references, but I’m not at all sick of it… And so with a fairly recent online tasting of Uruguayan Tannat reds (led by friend of 1WD and Master Sommelier Peter Granoff), this event recap is the perfect time to mention it all again, right?!?? Uruguay, as we were reminded during said online tasting, remains a fascinating wine region by the numbers. To wit: At almost 3,900 acres, Tannat i ..read more

The post Wine Reviews: Mini Round-Up for June 17, 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! 2017 Tenute Cisa Asinari Marchesi di Gresy ‘La Serra’ (Moscato d’Asti): Still not ag ..read more

The post More Proof That the DtC Underage Drinking Argument Is Bullsh*t appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. Last week, you might have missed a brief butt important article titled Direct-to-Consumer Shipping and Underage Consumption, penned by Alex Koral, Regulatory General Counsel for Sovos ShipCompliant, and published on WineBusiness.com. In his pithy write-up, Koral touched on a topic that has been a nettle up my wine-sniffing schnoz for at least the last 14 years: namely, the red herring argument that over-regulating direct-to-consumer wine sales via the USA’s hopelessly outdated and anti-compe ..read more

The post Wine Reviews: Mini Round-Up for June 10, 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 Albert Bichot Cremant de Bourgogne Brut Rose (France): Very, very, very good stuf ..read more

The post From Here to Eternity: Tenuta Licinia Recent Releases appeared first on 1 Wine Dude. The soft-spoken James Marshall Lockyer, winemaker of Tuscany’s Tenuta Licinia, would likely balk at the Iron Maiden reference of today’s title, but as you’ll see in a few minutes, the concept of eternal distance feels apt when tasting through his wines, because they have finishes longer than my run-on sentences. Established in 2007, Tenuta Licinia is making a name for itself in terms of being almost fanatical about preserving, examining, and improving Tuscan terroir. Lockyer wasn’t always a terroir f ..read more