Wine is intensely personal: You smell it with your own nose and taste it with your own mouth. And yet wine is most enjoyable when the experience is shared. These points never seemed to be in tension until a worldwide pandemic sent most of us scurrying to the safety of our homes. Now we’re doing virtual tastings and winery visits on Zoom.
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This 2018 Domaine des Foudres is 100 percent Gamay from the Beaujolais Cru Moulin à Vent. It’s dark reddish-purple, with good black-plum and mixed berry aromas and appealing earthy mineral notes of damp clay. Tart plums and berries fill the mouth, shaped by zippy fresh-fruit acidity and light, gently astringent tannins. It’s on the rustic side, but certainly approachable, a good wine with food.
FIND THIS WINE ONLINE:
Check prices and find vendors for Domaine des Foudres Moulin à Vent on Wine-Searcher.com; unfortunately, Wine-Searcher is showing only a few vendors for this wine.
Check this Wine-Searcher link to find information and listings for a wide variety of Moulin à Vent. Read article.
When I pulled the cork from a bottle of Henry Fessy Château des Reyssiers Régnié to enjoy with lunch the other day, I was a bit irritated to discover that its cork was not a cork.
Wait! What?
That’s what I said. This wine was stoppered with one of those pale, flesh-colored plastic plugs. Feh!
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This clear, dark, reddish-violet wine’s aroma offers pleasant red berries, strawberries and raspberries and a whiff of black-cherry liqueur. On the palate it’s fresh, juicy, and tart, balanced if somewhat rustic cherry-berry fruit framed by crisp acidity. Very good Régnié, good with food.
FIND THIS WINE ONLINE:
Check prices and find vendors for Henry Fessy Château des Reyssiers Régnié on Wine-Searcher.com.
Read about Régnié at this Wine-Searcher link, and scroll down to find vendor and price listings for dozens of other wines from the village.
Read article.
Sicily, the ancestral island home of many Italian-Americans, has a long and interesting history in wine production. Neil Duarte takes us on a tour. Read article.
The social distancing of the past month has prompted some surprising changes in the way Americans buy wine. Or in the way this American buys wine, anyway. Let me count the ways.
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Indigenous Piemonte is dark reddish-purple, with appealing red fruit aromas that lift from the glass, offering mixed-berry notes and a whiff of strawberry liqueur. It’s flavor is full of ripe cherry-berry fruit, framed with fresh, mouth-watering acidity and soft but perceptible tannins. It’s pleasantly rustic and comes across as a versatile table wine that carries its 14% alcohol well.
FIND THIS WINE ONLINE:
Check prices and find vendors for Indigenous Selections Piemonte Barbera on Wine-Searcher.com.
Follow this Wine-Searcher link to read more about Barbera del Monferrato and find listings for dozens more examples of these good red wines. Read article.
It’s stressful to have to hunker down in self-isolation and social distancing, isn’t it? Stress and loneliness make the idea of pulling the cork from a bottle that you’ve been hoarding seem like a very good plan. Let’s open a comfort wine!
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“La Gille” Gigondas is made by the respected Famille Perrin, whose flagship wine is Chateau de Beaucastel. Full of ripe yet elegant raspberry and herbal aromas that evoke the scents of Provence, it is drinking very nicely right now. It’s an excellent wine, well suited when scary times prompt a wish for comfort.
FIND THIS WINE ONLINE:
Check prices and find vendors for Famille Perrin 2015 “La Gille” Gigondas on Wine-Searcher.com.
Read about Famille Perrin and browse a price and vendor list of all its wines at this link.
Follow this Wine-Searcher link to find listings for dozens of other wines from Gigondas. Read article.
Is there an art to drinking alcohol? Can drinking ever be a virtue? The Renaissance poet Vincent Obsopoeus thought so. Now we can read his sparkling work in English. Read article.
