• Reading a wine label: The great Tim McNally offers a wine label reading primer, and it's as good anything I have seen. "Who can read this damn thing and make any sense of it at all? Long words, abbreviations, references to places no one ever heard of, and not a mention at all as to what grapes are in the bottle," he writes. "The world’s worst wine labels, when it comes to disclosing information, are from ... the United States. ... Our labels tell us practically nothing. Conversely, when you know what to look for on some other country’s wine labels, you will learn just about everything you need to know about the wine except what it smells and tastes like, which are subjective anyway."
• More than malbec: Dave McIntyre takes a look at Argentina and discovers there is more to the country's wines than the tidal wave of malbec washing up on our shores. "Think fresh, elegant cabernet sauvignon," Dave writes, "plummy, earthy syrah; and juicy bonarda. Most exciting may be Argentina’s pinot noir. ..." It's a well-thought out look at Argentina, and though some of the wines are pricey, Dave finds some great bargains, including a $13 pinot from Nieto Senetiner that I will look for and review here.
• Cava sales soaring: How well is cava, the Spanish sparkling wine, doing in the world marketplace? Consider that export sales are at an all-time high. The Spanish sold 12.7 million cases of cava to the rest of us in 2011, 2 percent more than in 2010. The reasons for this are obvious: Tremendous marketing, great prices and even better value, and quality that has to be tasted to be believed. Right, $10 Hall of Fame? Most impressively, the Spanish are breaking down the wine snob barrier that has always held cava back -- the idea that sparkling wine that doesn't come from Champagne (and is cheap) isn't worth drinking.
Comments