If I open a corked bottle of wine, I’m usually pretty pissed off about it. Though I’ve started saving all my receipts and taking back corked bottles, the culprit is usually some bottle that I’m excited about trying. It happened on my birthday, it happened with a nice Gamay meant to pair with […]

A few days ago, we wrote about our first encounter with plastic wine bottles with a 2008 Beaujolais Nouveau from Labouré-Roi. This winery thinks it’s understood that plastic wine bottles have a lower impact on the Earth than glass ones. But do they? That is, all aesthetic issues aside, is there a real […]

I have been following closure debate for many years. Several years ago, Murphy Goode began offering a valued priced, screw top series, called Tin Roof. We tried their Sauvignon Blanc and found an unassuming drinkable wine that we served several times that year.
Screw tops seem to offer a number of advantages.
First, they eliminate […]

Alice Feiring has blogged about it, the Wall Street Journal has complained about it, the Wine Spectator put it on their front cover, and it happened to us on our last outing – bad wine service. I know that this sort of thing happens, but there appears to be an epidemic. To make […]

We Texans pay more for our alcohol than folks in some other states. Historically, I blamed the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) for our elevated prices. I assumed that a state-imposed excise tax was responsible.
However, I recently visited a site that lists the excise tax imposed by each state on wine. It […]

As a part of our ongoing effort to find the best wine at the best price, I recently purchased a CostCo membership to check out their wine prices. This weekend, I stopped by and, I must say, these are amazing stores.
If you are not familiar with CostCo, they are kind of like a high-end […]

I recently made a trip to San Francisco, and I had the good fortune to eat out at several fine dining establishments. When the wine list appeared at the first restaurant, I noticed that the wine prices were much less than I would pay in Austin, TX. At first, I thought it was […]

It is always interesting when folks make assumptions about fields of which they have little or no knowledge and then make broadly dismissive claims about their assumptive knowledge.
This often happens when people apply statistics to “prove” their argument. A great example is a recent post on Vinography.

It seems like a dark little secret in the wine trade. No one ever talks about it. Instead we talk around it. We blame the closure. We blame poor handling, excess temperature, or bacterial contamination.
I know that many of these things can ruin or at least adversely affect the taste of a bottle of wine, […]

About a month ago, I posted a bit of a rant about Masi wine prices. You see, they had increased their prices by about 25% across the board for vintages that were already on the shelf.
It sure struck me the wrong way. I thought it was insulting to their current customers, and they put […]