Important Announcement!
Bigger Than Your Head
by Fredric Koeppel
8M ago
Friends, this site, Bigger Than Your Head, has existed in largely unchanged form since 2006. It has lasted through four US presidents, eight Olympic games, and one global pandemic. It has been a joy to post here for you and bring you reviews of wines and my commentary on them. The expense of hosting the site, however, has persuaded me to move it from this platform to Substack, where I’ll be switching to a new publishing model. I’m excited about this new phase of the site’s existence. All my old posts (more than 2,800 of them!) are archived on the new site, and I expect to continue publishing ..read more
Visit website
Caprio Cellars — The Main Reds, 2020
Bigger Than Your Head
by Fredric Koeppel
8M ago
Dennis Murphy, a home builder in the Northwest, moved to Washington’s Walla Walla Valley in 1999, convinced that he could follow his Italian heritage of devotion to the multitudinous uses of wine and its enjoyment. As owner and winemaker, he produces some 2,000 cases of wine annually, focusing on Bordeaux grape varieties, red and white. His interpretation is definitely New World, as the red wines display the brash sense of power and dynamism that often characterizes such efforts along the West Coast of America. That said, they are also rich in detail and dimension, deeply fitted with tannins t ..read more
Visit website
National White Wine Day? — O.K., I’ll Play Along
Bigger Than Your Head
by Fredric Koeppel
8M ago
Who decides these matters? Like what days get to be devoted to which grape varieties or types of wine? I think it all lies in the fevered dreams of marketers and PR people. So, today, I was recently informed, is National White Wine Day. I got a late start, but I’m offering My Readers now a roster of 12 white wines that does not include chardonnay — I have a lot to say on that subject soon — but does include some atypical and off-beat white wines to satisfy your curiosity and taste buds. A viognier from Arizona! A vermentino and a petit manseng from Virginia! An Australian riesling! Two example ..read more
Visit website
Three Summer Sippers from Conde Valdemar
Bigger Than Your Head
by Fredric Koeppel
8M ago
A white, a rosé, a red. That’s pretty much all you need in the way of wine, except for sparkling wine and Champagne, of course, but those are not the topics today. This trio from Conde Valdemar originates in Spain’s well-known Rioja region, so naturally the tempranillo grape is involved, but also viura, Rioja’s signature white grape. Good price/quality ratio here, with the Crianza 2018 being an especially good value at $20. Enjoy — in moderation, of course. Imported by Cru Selections, Woodinville, Washington. Samples for review. _________________________________________________________________ ..read more
Visit website
Wine of the Day, No. 814
Bigger Than Your Head
by Fredric Koeppel
8M ago
O.K., here’s a lovely rosé sparkling wine to enjoy this Summer, perhaps in an air-conditioned room with the shades drawn and some Miles Davis on the turntable. It wouldn’t hurt to share with someone appropriate — or wildly inappropriate, who am I to judge? The non-vintage Scharffenberger Cellars Brut Rosé Excellence is a blend of 55 percent chardonnay and 45 percent pinot noir, aged 24 months on the lees in the bottle. The color is a pale copper-salmon hue that hosts a teeming fount of glinting rose-gold bubbles; in the nose — tangerine and orange blossom, hibiscus tea and watermelon, a backg ..read more
Visit website
A Pinot Noir Sequence, Fourth Day — Domaine Jessiaume
Bigger Than Your Head
by Fredric Koeppel
8M ago
The Jessiaume family launched their estate in 1850, with succeeding generations working the vineyards and tending the winery until 2006, when, after 156 years, they sold it to Scottish businessman Sir David Murray, an entrepreneur and former chairman of the Rangers football club. Murray sold the estate in 2020 to Dr. Jean-Francois Le Bigot, president and CEO of biotech company Oncovita and president of Ginko Invest. My point is that it takes immense fiduciary prowess to purchase an estate in Burgundy. Anyway, improvements in the vineyards and the cellar had begun even before Le Bigot took ove ..read more
Visit website
A Pinot Noir Sequence, Third Day — Two Single Block Pinots from The Eyrie Vineyards
Bigger Than Your Head
by Fredric Koeppel
8M ago
The history of grape-growing and winemaking in Oregon’s Willamette Valley begins with David Lett, who defied conventional wisdom and planted pinot noir and pinot gris grapes in the Dundee Hills in 1965. The vineyards are still there, and though Lett died in 2008, his son Jason continues the family tradition of producing wines — whether red or white — in a Burgundian manner that’s expressive, eloquent and elegant. The pinot noir wines I write about today are sold out at the winery, alas, but they were limited in production anyway. Why write about them? Because they afford insight into a methodo ..read more
Visit website
Val delle Rose — A Certain Purity of Vermentino
Bigger Than Your Head
by Fredric Koeppel
8M ago
Famiglia Cecchi owns 186 organically-farmed hectares of vines near the village of Poggio la Mozza in Tuscany’s southwestern Maremma region that borders the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Val delle Rose estate produces a variety of typical wines, but our focus today is two renditions of the vermentino grape. One is made in stainless steel, and the other is made in a combination of aging vessels. Each makes a firm statement about the qualities of the vermentino grape and the expanse it can occupy while retaining a complete sense of purity and integrity. Of course, these characteristics benefit consumers li ..read more
Visit website
Two Quaffable, Affordable Wines from Tuscany — Red & White
Bigger Than Your Head
by Fredric Koeppel
9M ago
Carpineto was founded in 1967 by Giovanni Carlo Sacchet and Antonio Mario Zaccheo. The second generation now operates the estate, which has sustainably farmed vineyards in the Tuscan regions of Chianti Classico, Alto Valdarno, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Brunello di Montalcino and Maremma and produces wines typical of those areas. The need arose for a red wine of more moderate cost than, say, Chianti Classico Riserva or Brunello di Montalcino Riserva. Thus was born Dogajolo Rosso, a red blend that debuted in 1993. The name derives from the Italian word for “stave,” as in the staves of a ..read more
Visit website
A Pinot Noir Sequence, Day One — Le Cadeau Vineyard
Bigger Than Your Head
by Fredric Koeppel
9M ago
In 1997, Tom and Deb Mortimer found an uncultivated 28-acre parcel of rocky land on the south slope of Parrett Mountain in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The location was a few miles east of Newberg, in the Chehalem Mountains AVA. (Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the United States, spent his boyhood and adolescence in Newberg, before entering Stanford University.) Land was cleared in 1997 and ’98, with six acres of pinot noir vines being planted in ’99. The estate now measures 16 acres of vines devoted to pinot noir grapes in diverse plots or blocks. All the wines are produced from estate-grown ..read more
Visit website

Follow Bigger Than Your Head on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR