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From Required Eating
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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From Required Eating
Posted by Joe Campanale, September 21, 2007 at 1:15 PM
My main problem with most wine critics like Robert Parker Jr., and magazines like Wine Spectator is that they have specific tastes that don’t always correspond to my own. Another problem I have, even as a wine professional, is remembering all the wines I’ve tasted, what they tasted like, and whether I liked them.
Two new relatively new websites, Snooth and Cork'd solve these problems and do a bit more. On these sites, you can create a profile, which allows you to record your tasting notes and review and rate wines, find wine ratings from other users, see what your drinking buddies think, and receive recommendations and buy wines from a retailer. They also both act as online communities that unite oenophiles across the world.
After tooling around on them for a morning I found them to be quite similar to one another, and your choice should be based on personal preference. However each does have strengths and weaknesses:
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From Required Eating
Posted by Joe Campanale, September 14, 2007 at 11:50 AM
- "The Virtue of Old Age": In this post, the Riesling enthusiasts over at Derkellermeister stage a tasting of the same wine of a recent vintage and one that is much, much older. The kick? All of the wines are white and some are aged over 40 years. Especially interesting is the section entitled, "Why are some wines age-worthy and others are not?"
- The beauty of reading it from the beginning: Aaron Epstein, a quad-lingual, mid-twenties, and handsome wine expert, has left his job "toting the bag" (industry speak for working for a wholesaler and carrying a case of wines from client to client for tastings) so that he can "work" the grape harvest in Provence then try to assimilate to life in Argentina's wine industry. In this new blog, he sometimes rambles off on wine jargon but then brings readers back to reality with great advice like, "Those of you not in the wine business may be asking yourself why any of this matters. The short answer is it doesn't, really if you like a wine, drink it."
- There's so much to love about good wine. Not least of it all is the vineyards. This dramatic photo gives you the perspective of one single vineyard row. Images like this are enough to make a city mouse move to the country.
- And a nod to Eric Asimov, who continues to shine more brightly in his blog than his column in the New York Times. This week Asimov writes of a rare bottle of 1985 Barolo that he comes across on a rainy day. Even more alluring than his descriptions of the wine is the way he is able to convey the sense that the enjoyment of a wine is highlighted by so many factors, the people you are drinking it with, the environment, even the weather. The aged Barolo was great on that rainy day for him and with our last bought of heat, I drank a Gloria Ferrer Blanc de Blancs 2003 that was so refreshing that it seemed not only to quench my thirst but refresh the entire day.
From Required Eating
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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From Required Eating
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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From Required Eating
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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From Required Eating
Posted by Joe Campanale, August 17, 2007 at 4:00 PM
The Judgment of Paris is the Greek myth detailing Paris's selection of the most beautiful Greek goddess. His choice of Aphrodite eventually led to the Trojan War. It is also the name of a historic wine tasting that took place in Paris in 1976 and has been restaged many times since. The 1976 event pitted the top French white and red wines against the best of the fledgling California industry. The judges: the most respected French palates of the time. The outcome: an equally epic war between the victorious American and the defeated French.
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From Required Eating
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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From Required Eating
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 changesand wine is directly affected by weatherthe 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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From Required Eating
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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Website: http://www.dellanima.com
Location: New York
About: I own a restaurant in the West Village of Manhattan called dell'anima. I'm a former sommelier at Babbo. I freelance for Beverage Media, Inked, debonairmag.com and worksnw.com. I'll finish my masters in Food Studies at NYU in May 2008. I'm 23 years old.
Favorite foods: Nebbiolo, Aglianico, Ribolla Gialla, Tocai Friulano, Refosco, Sangiovese and black and white cookies.
Last bite on earth: Handmade pappardelle al cinghiale washed down with a simple Chianti.