All posts in June 2012

LAST WEEK A FRIEND showed up with a bottle of 20 year-old grand cru white Burgundy that for some reason had rather fully oxidized despite having been kept in a wine-friendly environment.  A spongy cork made us think the wine might have long since gone off, but the opposite proved to be the case. The…

FOR AMERICANS, France’s Loire Valley is familiar as the source of the lively, mineral-inflected white wines of Sancerre and Muscadet. The region is also home to a broad, if less frequently encountered, range of red wines made from varietals such as cabernet franc, gamay (of Beaujolais fame), and the curious antique cultivar pineau d’aunis. Although…

CENTRAL BOTTLE  WAS POURING three so-called orange wines at its most recent Thursday Night Wine Bar event.   We’ve written twice before on a category (I’ll cite those posts momentarily), that remains a controversial one.  Why so?   Because these wines are exactly the opposite of what the Robert Mondavi-UC Davis Axis of Normal mandates…