Articles

1/19/13 - (The fifth generation of Pelizzatti Peregos...) Ask virtually any wine professional and they’ll tell you that, though they seem glamorous to the casual observer, industry trade shows really aren’t a lot of fun. Often there’s an overwhelming amount of wine to try in a short period of time as well as light schmoozing, interspersed with non-verbal communication over a spittoon that is...

1/16/13 -   New York is getting ready to host a first-of-its kind event to celebrate German Riesling, one of the world's most terroir-expressive and long-lived white wines. Rieslingfeier, loosely in the tradition of La Paulée de New York, will take place February 15th and 16th. Growers from six of Germany's most beloved estates will be in town for a number of exciting dinners,...

1/7/13 - It’s easy to forget when looking at some of today’s high alcohol, high scoring, high priced California Cabernets that Napa built its reputation making restrained, Bordeaux-styled wines. These mature, beautifully developed wines are some of our favorite old bottles to open and have aged as well as Bordeaux from the same era.  Vintages like 1970, 1974, 1978 and 1985 are justifiably known...

1/3/13 -  (One of three cats that keep watch at Hofgut Falkenstein)   One of our most exciting German offers last winter (if not the most exciting) was the re-introduction to the US of the wines of Erich Weber at Hofgut Falkenstein, brought to our attention by Lars Carlberg. While 2010 was a bit of an outlier vintage in Germany, the year's high-acid character...

9/26/2023 Sylvain Pataille walking the vines (Courtesy of Michel Joly) Sylvain Pataille is doubtless the best known producer in Marsannay these days, and with good reason. A consulting oenologist before he started making his own wines, he has a reputation as a brilliant taster and analyst of wines and is equally deft when it comes to vineyard innovation. His success is all the more...

12/31/12 - We may be prejudiced because it’s our work, but we find the New York wine business to be endlessly fascinating, from growers to importers, distributors, beverage directors, and retail store buyers. Beginning in the 1970s and 80s, when importers, shops, and restaurants began to take an interest in fine wine, the New York wine industry has produced a stream of fascinating characters,...

12/15/12 -   One of our favorite things about wine is that there are no absolutely correct answers – taste is a subjective, variable, and personal matter. So it goes with the recent history of wine in Barolo and Barbaresco, about which you may have heard, possibly ad nauseum. Simply on the basis of our own taste, we’ve come down heavily on the side...

12/8/12 - (Jacqueline and Pierre Andre in their cave. Courthézon, France) Jacqueline André presides over the non-interventionist legacy of her father Pierre in the village of Courthézon, where the Andrés have worked biodynamically “depuis toujours” to translate their quartzite/clay/limestone terroir and 15 hectares of old vines (some up to 160 years old) into the most harmonious and affordable Châteauneuf-du-Papes on the market.Jacqueline’s wines are...

11/26/12 -   This is Gernot Kollmann. ​​​​​​​​​​ Perhaps you know that he used to make wine at Van Volxem, or that he was the winemaker for a bit at Knebel. Perhaps you’ve tasted some of the wines he made at the recently revived Immich-Batterieberg in 2009 and 2010. If so, you should jump to the bottom of this offer to see the wines,...

 11/24/12 - The great Alsace producer Trimbach was founded in 1626. We don’t know what the wines were like then, but for some years Trimbach has produced two of the world’s greatest dry Rieslings, Clos Ste Hune, and Cuvèe Frederic Emile. Clos Ste Hune is produced in tiny quantities and most of us would consider it to be expensive (at $100-$300 per bottle, depending...

11/21/12 - Sometimes superb wines take circuitous routes in reaching Chambers Street: Our Burgundy maven John Truax got a call from his friend Russel Hone at Becky Wasserman Selections concerning a delicious Chiroubles they drank at a combination meat market/restaurant in Chablis. Only 20 cs of 2009 and 2010 were available, would we like them? The wines were made by the talented Philippe Jambon...

11/17/12-   We first met Cyril Fhal in 2004 at the Dive Bouteille, a "natural" wine show in the Loire Valley, where he was showing his 2002 Carignan/Grenache red and a 2003 white from 100% Maccabeu. The wines were elegant, balanced and full of character, certainly among the finest from the new generation of wine-makers in the Languedoc-Roussillon. Subsequent vintages from the quietly talented...

11/7/12 -   Our friend Paul Grieco at his chain of wine bars called “Terroir,” bills a portion of his snack roster as “Things You Must Eat.” And it’s precisely that: an eclectic little list of assorted tasty morsels. As we look at our Champagne shelf going into the holidays, we see an assortment of new and tasty morsels from our favorite small growers,...

 10/21/12 - (The office at Romeo del Castello) Sicilian wine is gradually encroaching on Tuscany on our shelves (we realize that they aren’t entirely logical neighbors, but such is real estate). More and more excellent wine is coming from Sicily; the future potential there is tremendous, and this will present a serious editing problem for us, but for now it’s exciting to add to...

10/18/12 - (Nothing says fall like a glass of Trousseau...)   Once in the recent past, we didn’t buy Puffeney. We wanted to make room for some new faces in the Jura. If it were up to some of us, we’d allow the Jura section of our store slowly to expand, spilling over into Burgundy, the Rhône, Alsatian Riesling, etc… until the fabulous vignerons...