2020 is barely a week old, but as I’m calendaring the year’s prompts for #ItalianFWT, #WinePW, #Winophiles, winemaker lunches and trade tastings in LA as well as other activities like the Wine Media Conference in Oregon and wine travel to Europe and South America, I’m reflecting on what we accomplished here on Wine Predator in 2019– and trying to decide what to submit for the Born Digital Awards (see what articles I submitted to the Millesima contest here).
I’m not really sure how we found the time, but Sue and I participated in EVERY SINGLE monthly prompt for Italian Food Wine Travel aka #ItalianFWT, Wine Pairing Weekend aka #WinePW, and the French Winophiles #Winophiles.
Time’s always moving on. Nothing can stop it. The question is whether we use our time well or not. We can't do anything about the past, but what happens in the future depends on what we do now. We can create a happier future by remembering that in being human we are all the same.
We joined wine bloggers and influencers from around the world but mostly from the US as we tasted and wrote about wines together following prompts that the group developed and organized sometimes with samples, and sometimes not.
Here on Wine Predator, that means 36 posts altogether at 15-20k words each! That’s the word count of a good sized book!
For almost every single article, I researched the region, the wine, the winery, and Sue and I both researched the cuisine to come up with menus and pairing ideas. Continue reading →
From Franciacorta in the north in Lombardy and Friuli in the northeast to Toscana in central west and Sicily in the southwest, Italy is full of wines to discover. With over 2000 indigenous grapes grown in the 20 regions, the range of wines and expressions makes getting to know and understand Italian wine an interesting challenge as I discovered last year during the VinItaly Wine Ambassador Course.
Think it’s time to tune up your Italian wine game in 2020?
During this time of reflection, I have a few wines worth remembering — and recommending along with a few blog posts you might want to revisit.
Here on Wine Predator in 2019 we researched, tasted, and wrote about hundreds of wines in 123 posts with 176,090 words averaging 1432 per post.
That’s like writing three novels.
So when it comes time to sort through all of these posts to choose some favorites to submit to year end contests like this one and for year end wrap-ups here on Wine Predator, I asked for some help from some of my loyal readers and friends.
I also asked Sue– but I wanted something different from her — not the best, but ten posts that were the most memorable. Not necessarily her favorite wines or meals but the ones that made the best, the strongest memories for her.
“When first asked to do this task,” says Sue, “I did not realize just how many posts we put out this year. How do you take 116 and pick out 10 of your favorite children. Some are so rich with our experiences. So many experiences, so many memories, such an abundance of fantastic wine and food. I was then told to focus on exceptional wines. Did that make it any easier? I find that my favorites evoked such great times rich with foods that paired beautifully with the wines we served them with.
The most memorable wines come with the most memorable experiences.
“The wine and the food shine together making it a memorable event,” she continues. “I was able to narrow it down to 30 right away. Bringing it down to the 10 most memorable took some time, but here it is:
5. Chile’s Odfjell Biodynamic Reds and Pastel de Choclo – Every time I research menus and pair the wine of the region with the cusine of the region it is always a hit. These wines were outstanding and with the menu it was over the top
For the category of Wine Pairing, there are SO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM — like probably 100! I considered a few including Rasteau which is a solid post but ended up debating these two which Sue also really liked:
in December 2019, just in time for holiday celebrations and Sparkling Wine Day on New Year’s Eve, Clos des Amis released their Chambang traditional method sparkling wine made from Ventura County Chardonnay.
“Disaster.”
That’s how Clos de Amis winemaker Bruce Freeman describes the 2019 harvest in Ventura County. Continue reading →
The Winemakers Wife features scenes from Champagne France, past and present
Living in coastal California 75 years after World War II and 100 years after World War I makes it hard to imagine what it was like to live in Europe under the threat of invasion and occupation. Knowing that 6 million Jews were methodically taken from their homes to work in the concentration camps and exterminated is horrible and heartbreaking.
Closer to home, along our coast, round concrete structures remain as sentinels at the shore testifying to our fears of invasion by the Japanese. Worse, Continue reading →
This is a name several people mentioned to us when we said we were looking for organic and biodynamic winemakers in the Loire while we were there as members of the US Wine Tasting Team before the World Wine Championships in nearby Chateau de Chambord. In particular, we were looking for someone to visit in Vouvray. Continue reading →
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 