Recent content by Ken Schramm

You timed that well. OWC's allocations disappear in a flash. They're gone from the shelf almost as fast as they are gone from my glass. Madeline helped me line up a mixed case of Le Piane wines through Plum Bloomfield Hills. Time to do that again.

Jean-Paul on drums. Never heard of it Oswaldo, but after looking it up, Herbamont is indeed fascinating.

What she didn't like? Everyfuckingthing. French Merlot, West Coast Merlot, West Coast Cabernet Sauvignon, younger Bordeaux, Zinfandel/Primitivo, really no Pinot (French or Oregon), Syrah, Sangiovese, Cabernet Franc, southern Rhone blends, Mourvedre/Monastrell on its own, Grenache on its own...

I am in love with both the Mimmo and the Le Piane. They are gone before I notice. They are also hard to find in Detroit. I should buy them by the case. Had a pleasant 2015 Poggio Scalette Il Carbonaione with some sausage ravioli this week that was big but matched the meal very well. The other...

A friend managed to break through my wife's resistance to dry reds a few years ago when he served us beef tenderloin with a '75 Lafite at a dinner at his place ("Ooh, I LIKE this one! Can you get some of these?" "Uhh, probably not, but...). Tough act to follow. Been trying to reach that bar...

I started off making the Durand mandatory on >20 year old bottles, but I am down to 15 now myself.

It never fails to impress how a little note of winemaker humanity improves the flavor and aroma of a wine.

Well... Tried it all the way back to 1950. Nada.

When I visited the Franconian Brewing Museum in Bamberg, there was a section devoted to recognizing the brewers who had succumbed to CO2 in the fermentation cellars and vats. We have a pretty reliable CO2 monitoring setup in our production facility. FWIW, a historic source of Disorderly...

Fruit wines - well, actually fruit meads - are kinda my life right now. I, too, find fruit wines to be problematic in many instances. Because most table fruits like blueberries only have enough sugar in them to ferment out to 8% or so (14-19 Brix), they are typically chaptalized with either...

While I have been reading "Utopia or Oblivion," Fuller's commentary on Industrialism vs Craft has a certain familiarity. Does anybody here know whether and/or to what extent Joe may have paid any attention to Fuller? Fuller's creativity, intelligence and prescience on some things is impressive...

For all of us sitting casually on a multi-bottle stash of '62 Rauzan-Segla, he said, feeling inadequate.

Had this last night with Easter dinner, which was take out Italian because life is busy these days. This was one of the bottles I ordered direct from a shop in Tuscany. Maybe 2-5 years ahead of true maturity, but still gloriously aromatic and satisfying. Though both acidity and tannins were...

On Substack, you're supposed to pay $80/yr for shit this good, and it's not this good. And yes, we are in Lovecraft territory, seamlessly woven into a Salvador Dali painting.

Tried a 2021 Bruno Giacosa Nebbiolo d’Alba earlier this week, and found it to be a disappointment. Got better after a couple of hours of air; respectable, maybe, but never reached anything that I could call a high point. Hollow on both the nose and the palate. The Produttori del Barbaresco...