Posted by Brian Halweil, March 14, 2008 at 10:15 AM
It was a coming out party of sorts at The Modern on Monday night. Food and wine writers, restaurateurs and sommeliers, and wine dealers from Amagansett, New York, to Manhattan all gathered to see and taste the ambitious blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Petit Verdot that has been in the making—with great secrecy and drama—for the last three years at Bedell Cellars in Cutchogue on Long Island’s North Fork.
Emblazoned with a Chuck Close daguerreotype of a cluster of grapes, Musée aspires to hold rank with grand crus from Europe, South America, and other internationally recognized wine regions&mdas;and not just because of its superstar label, a recurring symbiosis for Michael Lynne, Bedell’s owner, a modern art collector, and a film producer credited with such titles as The Lord of the Rings, whose aesthetic ranges from Freddy Kreuger to Barbara Kruger, and who has seamlessly melded art and wine. Musée hopes to inspire, particularly the laggards of the wine world who haven’t seriously considered Long Island yet. Beaming like a proud parent while swirling a glass of the silky and slightly spicy drink evoking black plum and currant and pomegranate, Lynne declared, “Musée is only the beginning. This is the message.”
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Posted by Joe Campanale, September 28, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Once a month, on a Wednesday, a group of wine bloggers "meet" (in the virtual sense) to share their tasting notes and insights and post around a central theme. They call this, WBW, or Wine Blogging Wednesday, and some really solid, witty wine writing has come out of it, such as this post from the Second Glass.
The group was started by Lenn Thomspson of Lenndevours and here's how it works:
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Posted by Joe Campanale, September 7, 2007 at 12:00 PM
I'll never forget the feeling of disappointment. On my twenty-first birthday, my uncle had chosen a wine from his cellar harvested in the year of my birth for us to enjoy. After careful decanting, he served it only to realize that the wine was not in good condition. In fact, it was awful. It tasted of oxidation and decay. Years of moving it from one makeshift cellar to another (one damp basement to another) had taken its toll on the wine. All that build-up and years of waiting had culminated in something that was more vinegar than vino.
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Posted by Joe Campanale, August 31, 2007 at 4:30 PM
When people speak of traditional Italian wines (as opposed to modern ones), they mean wines that are produced more or less the way they were about 100 years ago. The turn of the twentieth century was a time before the widespread introduction of French barriques, single vineyard bottlings, and temperature-controlled fermentations in stainless steel tanks. All of these inventions (combined with lower yields, global warming, and a shorter aging period) has combined to make wines that are now more concentrated, fruit-forward, and oaky than in times past. In short, more modern.
Josko Gravner, an off-the-wall winemaker in the northeastern region of Friuli Venezia-Giulia, makes a very different type of "traditional" Italian wine. Instead of using methods from 100 years ago, he makes wines as they did in ancient Greek and Roman times.
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Posted by Joe Campanale, August 24, 2007 at 2:30 PM
Eric Asimov's recent blog post on drinking beer with "wine people" reminded me of my first night on the floor as a sommelier at Babbo. Any time someone wanted a bottle from the cellar, I had to run down a flight of stairs, make sure not to bump into anyone running food, squeeze my way through the people crowding the maître d' (always brandishing a sweet, comforting smile even though I was freaking out on the inside), run down another flight of stairs, and search for the bottle in the enormous space. Then I would repeat the whole process on the way up. I broke a sweat in my first 30 minutes on the job, and this went on for the next seven hours.
At the end of the night, I pulled up to the bar to get my manager's drink, and Ken, the veteran bartender, asked this sage question: "So do you want a bionda [a light beer from the Chelsea Brewing Company] or a bruna [a darker beer from the same place]?"
"How did you know I wanted beer?" I asked naively.
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Posted by Joe Campanale, August 2, 2007 at 5:30 PM
Gary Vaynerchuk in Episode #285 of Wine Library TV.
Two nights ago, a top television exec dined at Babbo and I was his sommelier. As I masterfully executed a long-pour across the table, I hinted at my desire to host my own prime-time wine television show. He said, “I think you’re right. I was speaking with the president of the Food Network over lunch yesterday, trying to convince him that this was a good idea. America is ready for it."
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Posted by Joe Campanale, July 27, 2007 at 3:30 PM
In a recent Decanter blog post, Oliver Styles asked whether the wine industry should be thinking more about global warming or was it doing enough? And, should we as consumers be more aware of the impact we have? Silly questions for such a serious publication. Because of travel, waste, and agricultural byproducts, wine is a product that can have serious effects on the environment and leave a Sasquatch-sized carbon footprint. It can contribute to global warming and be affected by it.
If you're a wine lover, all of these issues should be on your mind, at least because, as weather changes—and wine is directly affected by weather—the wines we know and love may no longer exist. (That and the whole save-the-planet thing.) But what can we as wine drinkers do about it?
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Posted by Joe Campanale, July 20, 2007 at 11:30 AM
If Chianti can overcome the image of a dripping wax candle stuck into a fiasco (the traditional straw covered Chianti bottle with low-quality connotations) then why can’t Lambrusco? In a recent article by Eric Asimov, he points out that Lambrusco is worth drinking and mentions the struggle it has had in overcoming an image as a commercial, low-quality product.
And so Lambrusco became a joke among serious wine-lovers, who had little use for it other than comparing memories, as with Boone’s Farm or Lancer’s rosé, of their introductions to the pleasures of hangovers. The time has come to consign this unfortunate impression of Lambrusco to the same locked attic trunk that holds the '70s disco wear.
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Posted by Joe Campanale, July 13, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Today we add yet another new voice to the Serious Eats mix—Joe Campanale. Joe will be joining us on Fridays to touch on topics from the world of wine. Cheers! —The Serious Eats Team
By Joe Campanale | Is there anything the iPhone can’t do? Well the whole winemaking thing is up in the air. But you can now make wine from your home computer using a new invention called the WinePod ($3,500). Just dump in (er, carefully place) 15 gallons of grapes (about seventy-five 750ml bottles), and use the interactive software to control the whole process, from pressing to aging.
But make sure you don’t use Thompson seedless or Concord grapes. These are part of an American vine variety known as Vitis labrusca and have a distinctly foxy taste that exists somewhere between Welch’s grape juice and an off-vintage Manischewitz. Instead, hunt down your favorite Vitis vinifera variety such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer, or Kadarka, then plug in your WinePod and wait a year to enjoy your Main Street Cuvee!
