Wine Fictions

 The so much expected Football European Championship has started. All around Europe people gather and celebrate the games in some kind of, for me, strange national identification. Germany, the hosting country not only of the Championship but also mine is living exceptional days. In Hamburg it is noticeable an increase on the number of police patrolling the streets (which have already avoided worst things to happen as you can check here ), the amount of people walking around in football shirts or with painted faces or the inevitable firecrackers whenever the hosting national team scores a goal. But how does it affect the wine business? This question was first asked to me by a fellow wine seller who has complained about the beer culture associated to football and the consequent decrease on wine sales. Instead of trying to answer that, I would rather prefer to ask whether is there a perfect football wine? To the customers that have came asking for wines I tended to recommend lighter, ...

 How important is the history of a wine? Even though I always assume the challenge of trying to be impartial in my personal evaluation of a wine, I also have to confess that I barely achieve such goal as I tend to let myself seduce by all kinds of extra information which may influence my tasting. I am just too sensitive to the worlds you can build around a particular world which is a bottle of wine. Going directly to the wine in question, the fact that it was a 1932 harvest has directly awoken in me an almost uncontrollable world of expectations. Tasted at a recent event of Wines of Roussillon in Hamburg it came as the biggest highlight of a very eventful evening.  Composed of Grenache Gris and Grenache Blanc it has revealed nice dried apricots, dates and some bitter almonds coated by an acidity which imposed a tremendous freshness to a wine which is over 90 years old.  In a way, it presented itself fresher than a 2002 tasted right before. Only having been bottled in 2022...

 One of the most exciting things about working with wine is to come across its multiple facettes and how human interference on the fermentation process can produce such different and surprising results.   It has also been quite interesting to follow how knowledge has been reopening older styles of producing wine such as the one that I want to write about today. Having its origins in Georgia for over 6000 years, producing wine in clay amphorae is becoming more and more popular all around the world barely surprising the most common of wine drinkers, having become a viable option to age or even ferment wine instead of the more common oak barriques or stainless steel.  To know more about it, I recommend you this article by Vero Vino . But going to this Beaulieu.  In the mouth it is incredibly fresh with vigorous tannins that develop into some earthy notes as you let it breath.  It can be the power of suggestion, but I have felt some terracota notes on it. That ...

 In one of my previous posts I have written about the importance that labels have in our process of choosing a wine. The same is also true of our choice of not buying a wine.  It is quite interesting to see that younger customers tend to feel seduced by the labels of most of the nature wines we have ( like this one ) and the older customers to some of the traditional cote of arms such as the one from Dr. Bürklin-Wolf .  The truth is that this is, by no possible means, an indicative of a wine's quality, even though they often reveal quite a lot about its production processes or to which kind of public they want to reach.  I am also often confronted with the question of the price a wine costs. Even though the major part of the questions are about how and why is such a wine so expensive, there are also customers who openly say that they do not drink certain kind of wines as a courteous way of saying that they do not drink cheaper wines. This often comes with the covered...

For many Germans French wine is still seen as a holy reference when it concerns wine. Being so, the market is absolutely flooded with all sort of wines which not always correspond to what you would expect and more than once was I deeply disappointed with the quality presented.  Having recently ordered wine from Belvini , I came across this wine which has been produced specially for them, which is a phenomenon that I first got to know in Germany. Having been selected as Belvini wine of the year and with some more distinctions, I thought about giving it a shot. Even though the label presents quite an interesting and rather seducing design, it lacks some vital as the year it was produced.  A reference to the grapes used was also missing, rather having an extensive text about the idea of creating such a wine. The first impression I had once opened was of a wine extremely soft and rather easy to drink, which was a suspicion confirmed with the first sip. Fruity red berries involved ...

I have to confess that whenever I open a bottle of wine I like to start searching something more it so that I can enrich the first research  I have done before buying it. Where does it come from, who has made it, why have they made it, is there something special or witty about the name, who has done it and the history behind it are some of the questions that I feed and expect to have answered. One of my main expectations when I open a wine is that it can offer me the possibility to travel to different places by offering me a unique combination of tastes that can reflect not only the soil, but also the sun or the hands that have worked it. The expectations and goals of its producers and enologues. The conflicts and emotions behind it. In other words, I am expecting a similar feeling as to the one books can offer. And that is the reason why I think that both match each other so well. Besides the gastronomic suggestion, I always try to add the wine that can reflect the feeling of what...