For bloggers, October is #Blogtober where the challenge is to write and publish a post every day no matter how great or how small. So far so good! On Friday, October 1, I published about Brunello di Montalcino, and yesterday October 2 I wrote 1800 words about the results of the World Wine tasting Championship. October is also #MerlotMe, Continue reading
USA Wine Team logo
UPDATE: This article is about who won the 2021 World Wine Tasting Championship. If you are looking from who won 2022, go here.
Who Competed for Team USA? What wines were tasted? And what’s that lawsuit all about? I’ll do my best to answer these questions and more starting with who won by identifying the most wines “blind”! At the World Wine Tasting Championships organized by La Revue du vin de France and held today at Chateauneuf-du-Pape, France, the winning team scored an astounding 166 points! And which team took the trophy and wines home to which country?
Brunello di Montalcino
Brunello di Montalcino is Chianti’s beefier older brother. Like Chianti, Brunello is made from the Sangiovese grape, but, you guessed it, from the Montalcino region in Italy AND Brunello is not its own completely separate grape but a biotype of Sangiovese, which means it’s genetically similar but still distinct. Sangiovese piccolo is grown in Chianti; sangiovese grosso goes into Brunello di Montalcino. Continue reading
I live on Chumash land here in Ventura County. The Chumash village near my home was known as Shishilop, and thousands of Chumash lived here in this sliver of land between the hillsides and the Pacific, and between two rivers, the Ventura and the Santa Clara. This part of California is technically a desert, but so much water flowed through the area that it created mudflats, and the maritime community of Chumash here were known as “mud people.” Most of the Chumash lived near the Ventura river and the sea.
According to this site, Shishilop means ”port-on-the-coast” which it was. This village, just east of the Ventura river mouth, was the largest Chumash village in what is today Ventura county. While the area has been inhabited for many thousands of years, the Chumash settled Shishilop about one thousand years ago or more, and the Chumash thrived with plentiful fish from the seas as well as the river. They made tools, a type of seafaring canoe, and they regularly crossed between the mainland and the nearby islands including large, close Limu (Santa Cruz Island).
Our region still is home to Chumash and to their stories about the land. Continue reading
a line up of 6 organic soon to be biodynamic wines from Domaine Bousquet
Bastias clearly didn’t get there the easy way. Continue reading
I should be packing for France. For over a year now, I’ve been researching the Rhone Valley, and how best to get to Châteauneuf-du-Pape to compete or cover the World Wine Tasting Championship slated to be held there 10/2/21. Should I fly into Lyon? Marseille? Nice? Toulouse? Deals to fly in to Geneva, Porto, and Milan also caught my eye– cities all closer to the Southern Rhone destination than Paris. But in early July, life got a little complicated when it came to the contest. And I may or may not be part of a lawsuit related to this. It’s been quite the roller coaster with Team USA WINE. And if I’m not competing, like I did in 2019 in the Loire, I’d really like to be there covering the story. I just checked flights from LAX! Continue reading
Rigmarole. What a perfect word for what we’ve been going through globally during the pandemic: a lot of rigmarole. Masks. Social Distancing. Extra washing. Vaccines. COVID tests. Elbow bumps instead of hand shakes. Elbow bumps instead of hugs. Vaccine card checks. “Galimatias” means “rigmarole” according to Continue reading
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 