Yep, for me it’s rosé wine all day every day please!
The second Saturday of June, today, June 13 is Rosé Wine Day, and to celebrate, we have three rosé wines from the Finger Lakes region of New York, a region just south of Lake Ontario and the city of Rochester in the northern part of the state. The deep glacial lakes moderate the temperatures so that wine grapes thrive– they don’t die or get damaged from frost in winter or spring and they don’t get too hot in the summer.
“Why do the bottles say ‘dry” rosé wine?” someone asked.
As summer gatherings become more of a reality after a spring of staying home, you may wonder what to bring to that potluck on the horizon.
Riesling is a great choice for a potluck because it goes with such a wide range of foods. Especially easy drinking and affordable riesling from New York’s Finger Lakes region!
There’s definitely been a ZOOM boom the past few months. During these crazy COVID days, when getting out to go wine tasting is fraught with challenges, wineries and wine educators have gone crazy with ZOOM.
At first, it was easy to keep track of the various offerings I learned about from emails, twitter, facebook, etc. But now there are so many amazing opportunities to learn from the experts about wine in free or reasonably priced ZOOM, Facebook live, Instagram and other online sessions that it’s hard to know which to do!
Of course, I’ve been participating in online wine sessions for years with Snooth, #winestudio, #ItalianWFT, #WinePW, #Winophiles, and so many more where I’ve been sent samples of wine and learned about wines from all over the world using twitter, facebook, and other platforms, public and private, to communicate.
Since the pandemic, I’ve also joined in Zoom chats. Just like any educational opportunity, much depends on the facilitator. This is where people like Elaine Chukan Brown, with her background as a college professor, have excelled. I’ve also been impressed by:
Napa Valley Wine Academy’s quick pivot to move content online, both free and fee, and I try to catch as many of their free Facebook sessions as I can; I’ve been impressed with the affability and knowledge of the teachers in each of the sessions.
David Glancy of San Francisco Wine School wealth of courses worth checking out–
Nick Jackson’s weekly series about tasting wine blind.
Pamela Busch who did an excellent job when she facilitated a Verotalk with Antonella of La Maliosa which I wrote about for Earth Day in April.
Verovinogusto importer Sheila Donahue coordination of sessions from her Ventura office; I joined her for a ZOOM session when we tasted the wines of Lorenzo Corino with him while he was home in Italy.
This week, out of all of the choices that have proliferated, both live and available on YouTube, I have calendared five sessions:
today from 5-6pm, blind wine tasting with David Glancy
today from 6-7pm #winestudio’s session on Lugana’s Geography
Weds from 5-6pm with Clos des Amis (details below)
Thursday at 2pm with Nick Jackson on discerning three red wines
Saturday at 8am on New York’s Finger Lakes with #WinePW
On Wednesday, I will be on the other side of the ZOOM chat! Please join me virtually for the next VeroTalk when I’ll join winemakers Bruce Freeman and Gretel Compton in Santa Paula for “Old World Style Wines from the New World in an Undiscovered Part of California” on
It’s a countdown: five Sangiovese, four terroirs, three producers, two regions, one country, and one importer — Verovino– for this month’s Italian Food Wine Travel group of wine writers! Here’s the invitation from host, Wendy Klik.
Sangiovese is the grape in that ubiquitous Chianti bottle, you know the one in the straw basket. They used those baskets, called fiasco, (seriously!) to help with shipping back in the day. Learn more about Chianti here.
Sangiovese is grown in other areas of Italy in addition to Chianti, with most of it grown in the central parts of Italy and in Sicily. Today we’ll be looking at five wines: two from Tuscany, home of Chianti, and three from neighboring Emilia-Romagna. One is actually from Chianti, and four from other areas worth exploring.
I’ve been on a deep dive into sangiovese this week, starting with sangiovese based blends from the west coast (read it here), then a focused tasting with a vertical from Ranchita Canyon Vineyard (read about it here), and now, back to the homeland with these five from Italy imported by Verovino.
The common denominator for wines imported by Verovino founder Sheila Donahue? Continue reading →
While Chianti is only made in one small area of Tuscany, Italy, the main grape in Chianti –Sangiovese– can be grown anywhere people want to try to grow it. Surprisingly, this very popular Italian grape is not grown that widely outside of Italy. Sure you can find small pockets of it here and there in the old and new world: for example Continue reading →
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 