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The time has come once again for you to give your digitus secundus (that’s your index finger, by the way… you creep!…) a momentary workout by using it to click on your favorite finalists in the Wine Blog Awards voting, this being the 2013 version thereof. I’ve got a long (in Internet time) history with [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine to
A quick hit today to highlight a few of the Answers.com Wine articles I’ve posted for May. There’s a good chance that even the geekiest among you will find one of these in particular quite interesting, though I should warn you that you won’t be able to un-see it or un-read it, and so it [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today! Shop W
So, like, what is this stuff, anyway? I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out o
In Carmelo, about three hours drive from the bustling city of Montevideo in Uruguay, along the river that divides the country from Argentina, there exists the picturesque hamlet of Narbona, the kind of place with such overwhelming quantities of irony that it causes story-relating fingers like mine to nearly freeze at the keyboard. Where to [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start get
Thanks again to everyone who participated in the ClubW.com giveaway, and special thanks to ClubW.com for offering up the loot! The giveaway is officially closed, and our randomly-selected winner is… Jeff Eckles! Jeff noted that he’d like to try some of the wines on offer from ClubW, specifically the 2007 Chateau de Mattes-Sabran Dionysus Corbieres, [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and s
Bouza Winery is small even by Uruguay’s petite wine production standards. 25 hectares of vineyards spread out between two plantings, in the Melilla and Las Violetas regions near Montevideo, yielding about 120 thousand bottles a year. But you wouldn’t know it tasting their wines, which are bold, modernly stylized (okay, and in a few cases [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and
“It’s the tiiiiiime, for the seeeeeaaason of… giveawaaaaaaaaaays….” It does indeed seem to be the season of giveaway action here on 1WD, and this week we’ve got another one; I’m teaming up with ClubW.com to giveaway one month’s free subscription to their wine club (that’s three bottles, or about $50 worth)! We’ll also be announcing [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more
Central Coast-ish California’s Pence Ranch, and its charismatic owner, Blair Pence (who, with toothy grin and cowboy hat looks every bit the part of a rancher) have been making the wine scene headlines so far in 2013, and not in a good way. To bring you up to speed on what has become the U.S. [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today!
In this episode of 1WDTV, I rant about why it’s stupid to make a distinction between wine bloggers and fine wine consumers, as if the two populations couldn’t possibly overlap (they do); and yet, the wine media tries to make this distinction time and time again, effectively setting everyone off on a wild goose chase. [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every g
Last month, I had the sad duty of bidding farewell to Shelby Vittek, who most of you know as “The Young Unpaid Shelby,” the 1WD intern. Shelby’s official internship (the actually-earning-university-credits part) concluded at the end of March. Everyone in Roberts HQ has been sad to see her go, most palpably my daughter who literally [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more
This week, I’m teaming up with NobleWorksCards.com to give away a set of ten wine-themed cards (valued at around $30)! As will surprise none of you who know me, several of the cards push the envelope (ha!… okay… sorry…) on safe-for-workness, all are wine-themed, and all of them are amusing. The pack includes handfuls of [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of ever
One of the interesting things to which the Wines of Argentina folks subject you as a judge in the Argentina Wine Awards (aside from tasting enough tannic Malbecs in one blind awards flight that you can no longer feel your gums, or taking you horse-wrangling in the Andes) is a seminar in which you’re one [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine t
One of the reasons that I’ve been scaling back a bit here on 1WD (less than I’d like to, actually… because I just can’t help myself… curse you, beguiling wines, CURSE YOU!!!) is that I’ve got more paying gigs competing for my time. Which sounds great superficially, but quickly turns into an oh-crap-I’ve-got-a-term-paper-due-this-week! feeling for [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and sta
It’s not often that you hear a winemaker say things like this about one of their wines: “We don’t care if people like it or not; if not, I’ll drink it!” And yet, that’s exactly what Casa Wines’ Helder Cunha said to me earlier this year in New York City, when I worked my way [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today! Shop Wine Products
Bienvenidos – and, as I’ll explain in just a moment, adios – to the Weekly Wine Quiz! This week, I’m preparing to head back down South of the equator, this time to Uruguay to tour its budding (from a global market perspective) wine regions. And so this week’s quiz is a bit of a brain-wrangler [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every gl
Merced del Estero, in the über-sunny San Juan region of Argentina, has been tending vineyards under the care of the familia Rodriguez for three generations, since 1897. But it took me just one iteration of the annual Argentina Wine Awards to help screw them up a little bit. MdE was one of the producer visit stops [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glas
This week, I’m teaming up with southern-born author Corinne Van Houten to give away a copy of her Carneros wine tour CD. The CD (remember those? don’t worry, an audio file version is also in the works) is an engaging introduction to the Carneros region, highlighting the history of (and providing current tasting/visiting tips for) [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more o
Welcome to the Weekly Wine Quiz! This week, we are finishing up the series of questions focusing on Argentine wine (I’ve recently returned from a two week jaunt down there to judge in the 2013 Argentina Wine Awards), all of which originally appeared in the newsletter The Juice. And we’re ending our S. American run [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glas
About a year ago, I unwittingly unleashed a minor sh*tstorm when I taste-tested some very good chocolates and paired them with some very good wine and found the match up to be not-so-very-good. The main issue then was that the very good chocolates in question were designed specifically to pair with wines. And yet, time [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every
Just a (very) quick hit today to let you know that the nominations for the 2013 Wine Blog Awards are now open, so head on over and submit your favorites for consideration. It might be the easiest route to upping your good karma that you’ll encounter today. Just sayin’… Now, the WBAs have been both [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today!
We continue to live by the motto “Go Big Or Go Home” when it comes to guests for The Punch Down show (if you missed March’s guest – Gary Vaynerchuk, finally coming back to talk about wine – then get your butt to the video and get caught up), and it’s with great pleasure that [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today! Shop Wine Products
Welcome to the Weekly Wine Quiz! This week, we are continuing a run of questions about Argentine wine (I’ve recently returned from a two week jaunt down there to judge in the 2013 Argentina Wine Awards), all originally appearing in the newsletter The Juice. And of course, we cannot really talk about Argentine wine without [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of ev
Last month, I was away in Mendoza playing Team America as an International judge in the 2013 Argentina Wine Awards. The AWAs were followed by a seminar that centered on the topic of how to reach “next generation” (Millennial) wine consumers. Today, I’m going to focus on the Trophy results of the AWAs – but [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of win
[ Editor’s note: following is the third guest post from the 1WD intern: the young, unpaid Shelby Vittek, who many of you will recall really shook things up with her first 1WD article (and continued that trend with her second). You can check out more of Shelby’s wine writing work at TableMatters.com, and find her [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass
Welcome to the Weekly Wine Quiz! This week, we’re continuing a short run of questions about the Argentine wine biz, since I’ve recently returned from a two week jaunt down there (courtesy of Wines of Argentina) to judge in the 2013 Argentina Wine Awards (much more to come on all of that jazz soon). And [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of w
I’m interrupting all of the planned 1WD content to cave in and give you the low down on the 2010 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti event held at NYC’s A Voce Columbus earlier in March this year, to which I was invited (as just about any of you following my twitter feed already know). I won’t [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today! Shop Wi
“Investing” in fine wine is a fool’s errand. As in, “greater fools” – for it is certainly a fool who hopes to sell his/her speculation to greater fools for a profit. The term greater fool is actually a pseudo-technical financial one, probably best explained in William J. Bernstein’s amazing book The Four Pillars of Investing [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of
Welcome to the Weekly Wine Quiz! This week, I’m kicking off a run of questions about the Argentine wine biz, having just returned from a two week jaunt down there (courtesy of Wines of Argentina) to judge in the 2013 Argentina Wine Awards (more on all of that – much more – in the coming [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today! Shop W
Closing in on the ninth decade, the beret and the smile are still unmistakable. Miljenko “Mike” Grgich, now a California winemaking legend, turns 90 this year. For those who aren’t familiar with the tale, Mike’s life story could make fitting fodder for a TV wine drama: one of eleven kids; stomped his first grapes at [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every gl
Thanks to all of you who tuned in and/or sent questions for our The Punch Down Episode Three interview with Gary Vaynerchuk. We kicked off a tad late, but it was well worth the wait. The replay of the live broadcast of our interview with GV is below – if you missed it, you’re in [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today! Shop Wine Prod
Welcome to the Weekly Wine Quiz! This week, we’re finishing off the series of questions related to the research cited in Master of Wine Tim Hanni’s new book, Why You Like The Wines You Like (full disclosure: I received a review copy, and I am mentioned favorably therein). Hopefully these questions have tilted your view [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every
This week, instead of reviewing a wine, I’m going to give you a review of wine’s role in our lives, as drinkers, and in the lives of those who toil their own land to produce it. Sort of. I recently worked my way through a review copy of a comic (sorry, sorry, graphic novel!) about [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today! Shop Wine Pr
Ok… so The Punch Down wine show continues to live by the phrase “Go BIG or go home!” Next week – on Monday, March 4th at 11AM ET – we will welcome media maven and best-selling author Gary Vaynerchuk as our guest LIVE on Episode Three of TPD! For those of you who’ve been living [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today! Shop Wine Produc
Welcome to the Weekly Wine Quiz! This week, we’re continuing the theme of questions relating to research cited in iconoclastic Master of Wine Tim Hanni’s new book, Why You Like The Wines You Like (full disclosure: I received a review copy, and I am mentioned favorably in the book, which in my mind merely signifies [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glas
It’s that time of year, again. Last year, Michael Cervin (with whom I later toured the wine scene in Crete) from IntoWine.com stirred up a minor sh*tstorm when he published the inaugural version of his list of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the U.S. Wine Industry. We love lists, and we hate them. [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine
[ Editor’s note: following is a guest post from the 1WD intern: the young, unpaid Shelby Vittek, who many of you will recall really shook things up with her first 1WD article. You can check out more of Shelby’s work at TableMatters.com, and find her on twitter at @BigBoldReds. Let us know what you think [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine t
Welcome to the Weekly Wine Quiz! This week, we’re continuing the theme of questions relating to research cited in iconoclastic Master of Wine Tim Hanni’s new book, Why You Like The Wines You Like (full disclosure: I received a review copy, and I am mentioned favorably in the book – though I didn’t know about [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of w
So… it’s Valentine’s Day… 8AM ET on that day, when this post will first hit the virtual airwaves… Are you sick enough of all of the bubbly and pink wine recommendations to want to rip off your own skull yet? My strong suspicion is “Yes” [ Editor’s Note: please do NOT rip off your own [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today! Shop Wine
Anyone remember back in 2011, when we talked about the fact that Boomers – who by and large account for the vast majority of current wine sales – wouldn’t be around forever, and so the wine biz really needed to get off of its duff and start thinking about how it would court Gen X [...] Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today! Shop Wine Pro
