DoNotWhine - Perspectives

Napa is easy to write about. You can write about the Cabernet. The scores. The Michelin-starred restaurants. The spectacular estates. You can write about which winery to visit, which bottle to buy, and which vintage got 100 points. But after visiting Napa enough times, I’ve realized those aren’t necessarily the things I remember. I remember the people. The conversations. The unexpected pour. The bottle someone opened that they probably didn’t have to. The wine I tasted years ago that I can still somehow taste in my mind. Somewhere along the way, Napa stopped being just a wine destination for me. It became a collection of memories. I’ve been fortunate to collect quite a few. At Alpha Omega, tasting their futures was one of them. There is something fascinating about tasting a wine that hasn’t been released yet, still evolving in the barrel, without a score or reputation telling you what to expect. It’s a small glimpse into what the winemaker believes that wine might eventually beco...

Wine classification was complicated. You had to know what AVA, terroir, and varietal  meant. You had to know the regions and their geography to know what the wine might  taste like or what grape it might be. You had to know terms like DOCG, Grand Cru Classé,  Reserva, and dozens of such acronyms if you needed a prayer to predict what the quality of  wine might be like. The French famously never mentioned the grape on the bottle. They just mentioned the  region and how the châteaux were rated during the times of Emperor Napoleon; the great classification of 1855. The authority, the standard of standards. First growth from the same château and vineyard commanded an extra digit in the price. A château that produced an 1855 classified Grand Cru Classé and sold an approachable second growth for $200 sold wines made from the same vineyard and its first growth for $2,000. You had to absorb details about soil types (clay, limestone, gravel), diurnal shift, mountain...

A very close friend of mine visited Italy recently and brought me back a magnet with the words “In Vino  Veritas,” which translates to “in wine there is truth.” And truth be told, my visit to Italy in late 2022 and  what I witnessed there was definitely mind-opening. More on that in a bit. Rewind to 2020/21 and the world was grappling with the lockdown and sullen nature of Covid. Stuck at  home, I remember spending most of 2021 researching, trying, and collecting Italian wines. One thing that quickly hits you when it comes to Italian wine over any other country, I think, is that it’s like a game of Monopoly that never ends. You try a region. Then you try another region and varietal, then you find a few more regions and varietals, and then you realize this game just keeps going on.  There is the light, fruity, flowery Sangiovese from Tuscany that is like a gentle wind that blows a single strand of hair on a summer day. Then all of a sudden here comes a gale storm fro...