Chouinard’s agenda these days has less to do with selling fleece and making money and more to do with saving the planet.
To do so, Chouinard’s passionate about regenerative agriculture which shares many of the same goals and techniques as biodynamic agriculture which I’ve written about many times this year.
“Revealing a message is what wine can do best in the pyramid of the senses, starting from pleasure, taste, emotion, and from time to time a kind of message in a bottle, ” says Gerard Bertrand, winemaker of Gerard Bertrand wines. “The message is the soul of the wine, the imprint of time, it is recalling 20, 30, or 40 years later that something very special happened in a certain vintage.” Continue reading →
But the wine kept coming, including a bottle that really wowed me as soon as I saw it:
One, the label was flat out gorgeous, depicting a bee amongst dandelions. You may not know this, but dandelions, while a weed, are critically important fro bees because the dandelions bloom early in the season providing an important food source for bees. This said to me that these people are Paying Attention!
Two, I recognized the Belle Pente vineyard on the label as one that is farmed biodynamically
Four, because it’s a biodynamic wine, I can continue my biodynamic wine experiment where I open and then periodically taste the wine to see how long it lasts! (OK partly my problem — I can only wait so long… in this case 14 days!).
The Day Chardonnay from the Bell Pente Vineyard in the Yamhill Carlton (AVA 12.75% SRP $38) with only 150 cases produced delivered on its promises and intrigued me enough to pursue learning more about the wines, the label, and the winemaker, Brianne Day.Continue reading →
Located just 10 miles west of downtown Portland, Cooper Mountain Vineyards is located in the far northern reaches of Oregon’s Willamette Valley on Cooper Mountain next to the vines that Dr. Robert Gross and his wife Corinne planted in 1978; Corinne was from the area, and they wanted their three children to grow up there too.
“Our land is our life and our life is our wine.” Cooper Mountain’s Motto
After 10 years of growing grapes, they decided to make their own wine by turning an old horse barn into a winery. By the early 1990s, they evolved to grow organically (certified by Oregon Tilth in 1995) and biodynamically (certified by Demeter in 1999).
According to a Swiss Institute study referenced by Willamette Valley Vineyard’s founder and winegrower Jim Bernau, it does: on average, our decision to purchase a particular wine is based 45% on where it comes from; price factors in at 25% and vintage is only 11%. And we want that information to be correct: 94% of consumers surveyed by the Wine Origins Alliance favor laws that protect us from misleading wine labels. Continue reading →
Italy, yes, of course, but Moscato from Indiana? Sure why not?
To celebrate this year’s Moscato Day, Thursday May 9, we thought it would be fun to share two that are expected and one that is not– two from Italy and one from, yes, Indiana — along with some appetizer ideas for happy hour at home or Mother’s Day. Check out Moscato from IDAHO here — yes it seems the “I’s” have it when it comes to Moscato!
Let’s start with an introduction to the grape of the day, Moscato, Continue reading →
PECORINO is not just a cheese, but a grape that almost went extinct!
Both Pecorino the cheese and Pecorino the wine are named after the abundant sheep and the sheep herders who roam the hills looking after them.
Native to Sibilini in the mountains of the Marche region of Italy, Pecorino was first mentioned in 1875 yet, the grape was abandoned and replaced by the more productive and easier to grow Trebianno (which I wrote about yesterday and you can read here).
In 1980, the grapevine was found in a vineyard and rescued.
Today you can find it being grown in both Marche, its native home, and in nearby Abruzzo Continue reading →
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 