Tune in to what top wine bloggers and experts are decanting into cyberspace with handpicked highlights of their latest and greatest.
A recent trip to central New York state’s Finger Lakes region served as a double eye-opening experience for Financial Times wine columnist Jancis Robinson — first, the “exceptional quality” of the Rieslings made there and, second, “how little they seem to be appreciated, or even known, in New York City.” An abundance of tourists and the warming effects of the lakes have helped an increasing number of wine producers sprout up in the essentially white-wine area, says Robinson. And they’re getting an assist from their U.S. Senator, Hillary Clinton, seen by locals as a “true missionary” for the wine-growing industry because of her advocacy in Washington. Robinson’s column also cites six “excellent” regional wines, including dry and sweet Rieslings.
Speaking of Rieslings, Food & Wine serves up a “brilliant” Australian pairing of, well, food and wine. The focus is on renowned Riesling maker Jeffrey Grosset and superstar chef Neil Perry, both of whom, well, like to eat and drink. And eat and drink they do — with the meeting’s menu including the kind of chicken curry “you find bubbling in a blackened pot on fishing boats throughout Asia” to go with a 2005 Grosset Piccadilly Chardonnay — one of a half-dozen wines (all recent releases, because, Grosset explains, “I don’t rate older wines as being necessarily better than younger ones, just different”). About as mouth-watering as a food/wine story can be.
Maybe the cork ain’t dead yet? It’s becoming increasingly clear to winemakers that using screw caps means being “extra careful” during their wine making, according to this New York Times piece by Erik Asimov: Screw caps prevent the dreaded cork taint that causes an estimated 5 percent of corked wines to go bad, but it turns out that screw caps are now recognized by some as occasionally having their own problems — something called “reduction,” which in layman’s terms translates into aromas such as burned rubber, cabbage and rotten eggs.