by Steve Dryden
Guadalupe Valley is located about fifteen miles north-east of Ensenada on the Tecate-Ensenada Highway 3. As you drop over the coastal foothills and arrive in the village of San Antonio de las Minas on the west end of the valley you might think you’ve arrived in Napa Valley in 1960. This “garden of Eden” is the home to about nighty percent of all grape growing and winemaking in Mexico. Valle de Guadalupe’s climate combined with it’s creative and innovative residents is leading the renaissance driving Mexican wines into notable arrival upon the tables of connoisseurs worldwide. And this is just the beginning..... Commercial grape growing began here in the early 1900’s with the arrival of the Russian (Molokan) farmers and has slowly progressed into a region that produces exc...
by Gabrio Tosti
Last time I wrote about integrity in wine production, I concentrated on what happens during the winemaking process. But integrity doesn't begin with the decision not to add chemicals to the final product, A healthy wine begins in the vineyard. Wines is a natural, agricultural product and when it’s treated lovingly start to finish in a healthy, natural, nurturing environment it repays us with an emotional experience, each glass is a journey across time and space, a communion between mother nature and human nature. However, some wine these days are produced in an industrial, antiseptic, profit driven environment that strips the nature from the product and, as often as not, leaves us unsatisfied, disappointed, and with a headache! A well tended, healthy grapevine at a high quality vin...
by Alder Yarrow
Over dinner last night, an old, dear friend asked me when it was that I became a wine lover. He then proceeded to tell me, in not so many words, that when we knew each other in college, I was the last person he would have expected to turn into a wine critic and gourmand. We had a good laugh and kept drinking, but his question got me thinking about how it was that I, or anyone for that matter, could go from a simple drinker to a devoted disciple. I’m pretty sure I haven’t had one of those moments that some people describe, where I take a sip from a glass, my head snaps up, and I say to myself something along the lines of “Wow, so this is what the fuss is all about.” Of course there have been dozens of small epiphanies over time, like the first time I really smelled and tasted ch...
by Alder Yarrow
This afternoon I poured myself the last of a bottle that had been opened earlier in the week, and wandered to the back yard to relax a little. I must not have slept well the night before, because after a few sips and a few moments in the sun, my eyes became heavy, and their lids fell. I awoke with a start, and found myself alone on a level plain of grey concrete stretching far and away into the distance. Alarmed, I gulped what was left of my tepid wine, presumably warmed by the sun which now seemed to recede high beyond a veil of haze. I rubbed my eyes. I stood in a massive empty parking lot, hemmed in on all its distant sides by featureless buildings leaning at crazy angles away from the grainy expanse. When I finally managed to turn away from this terrifying vista, I found mysel...
by Alder Yarrow
What did you think the first time you heard Mozart? Perhaps like me, you had a mother who would play classical music throughout the house on Sunday mornings –- and smile knowingly when you squirmed your way off the couch rather than sit for another minute listening to that stuff. To your eight-year-old ears, it was boring, complicated and inaccessible: You lacked the context in which to appreciate it. Perhaps as you grew up, though, you started to appreciate Mozart, if not enjoy it; perhaps because you learned more about how to listen to his music. You gained an understanding of its context. Most wine drinkers, no matter their level of knowledge and sophistication, are on a similar path of evolving understanding. Each mouthful whose flavors and aromas we drink, each bottle label we...
by Alder Yarrow
They say that bees and dogs can smell fear. Those with good noses in the wine world can smell it too; the ground that used to be so firm under our feet is starting to shift and shake. Like the enraptured leader of some doomsday cult predicting the coming apocalypse, I tell you truly: Look carefully, the signs of a wine revolution are all around us! In the past few months, I’ve had a good Chenin Blanc from India and a nice Cabernet from China. The entry of these wines into the international scene is interesting enough for its proof of the broadening scope of decent winemaking around the world, not to mention the loosening of the grip that some American and Australian wine companies have on the market for low-budget wine. Its real significance, however, has to do with why someone has bo...
by Alder Yarrow
I heard my wife say something unbelievable last week. It just sort of popped out, casually, as we were putting the final touches on a simple Tuesday night pasta dinner. "Honey, I'm worried that we're not buying enough good red wine to lay down for the long term." I nearly dropped my plate. This was the wine lover's equivalent to any number of preposterous fantasies: the sports fan whose wife requests a much bigger TV and matching tattoos of his favorite team; the meat lover's vegan girlfriend who suddenly offers to make prime rib at home; or the oversexed Woody Allen type whose wife suggests they start swinging with supermodels. I'm the luckiest man alive. When we first met, Ruth was simply prepared to humor my interest in wine. She enjoyed a glass now and then, but didn't thin...
by Alder Yarrow
That wine is getting better, for the majority of wine drinkers in the United States, can hardly be denied. By and large this means that the millions of bottles that fall somewhere in the five to ten dollar price range and which are purchased overwhelmingly at supermarkets have seen a noticeable increase in quality over the last decade or two. This increase in quality is manifest both in a larger diversity of wines as well as the essential truth that, on the whole, they taste a lot better. This sea change, which has been accompanied by, and which to a certain extent has been influenced, by an increase in wine consumption, has been made possible through better winemaking technology. This is not to say that this phenomenon exists purely because of better technology, but it could not have h...
by Alder Yarrow
Perhaps the greatest singular pleasure of wine for me, should I ever be held at gunpoint and forced to choose one, would be its near magical ability to taste like something entirely different from grape juice. Yes, I cannot deny the myriad rich conversations that tracked deep into the night supported by many bottles of the stuff, or the new friends I can count as a result of my interest in and writing about wine. I revel in the differences that I can sense in a bottle sampled carefully over the years, changing, shifting, always something new. But when it comes right down to it, tilting back a glass to taste something like the rich, slightly spicy flavor of clover honey is an experience that will never grow old. The aroma of new honey is but one of the infinite dimensions that wine can h...
by Alder Yarrow
The dialogue about wine in popular American culture usually fails to rise above a whisper. This is to say that most people don’t think about it or talk about it at all. For those to whom a conversation with friends about wine might not be the strangest thing in the world, much of the conversation I overhear in cafés and bars continues to reverberate with movie quotes from Sideways, coupled with either genuinely snide or tongue-in-cheek character assassinations of Merlot. Despite what seems to be a growing interest in wine, the majority of American wine consumers don’t bother with the news, intrigues, and current affairs of the world of wine. These good people, bless their hearts, just want to drink their wine and enjoy it. Sometimes, buried neck deep as I am in my stew of RSS fe...
