After returning from my fifth visit to Bordeaux to taste the new vintage (where’s my 5-timer robe??), I can say with confidence there is a lot to like about the 2023 vintage. This is a vintage like no other, where the best wines are exciting, vibrant, and emotionally thrilling, capturing the best of warm-vintage depth-of-fruit and the alluring qualities of cool-vintage freshness and minerality.
Read MoreAfter tasting through the Médoc for two days straight, we have a few things that seem to be clear–this is a vintage with compelling wines that deserve collectors’ attention, but it is also one that comes with much less clarity and consensus as the easy-to-understand vintages of the past five years. While many reach for a recent vintage as a parallel, the 2023s have a character all their own–something that makes us love wine in the first place.
Read MoreYesterday was a day of exploring Bordeaux, discovering a vintage, tasting First Growths (and wines that rivaled them), and spending time with friends new and old. All in all, it was a great day to be part of the people, wines, and region of Bordeaux. Unfortunately, it has become clear that it will take a bit more than a day to figure out this sometimes confounding, sometimes profound, and very unique vintage that’s about to shape the market. Conclusions for these wines will come in a matter of days, weeks, and years, but I’ll not be able to draw anything today.
Read MoreThis week, staff members in all three stores were treated to a special winemaker tasting and training with Alfred Tesseron, the man behind the wonderful Pontet Canet estate in Pauillac, Bordeaux, and from the Tesseron family in Cognac. The occasion for his visit was to introduce us to his brand-new project on the other end of the winemaking world—our end of the winemaking world, in fact—Napa Valley. Tesseron is releasing the very first vintage of his Napa wine called Pym Rae, and it is as exceptional as one might expect from this talented, venerated winemaker.
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