Recent content by Eden Mylunsch

Aha, the voice of reason (and experience). I love Condrieu, but one has to sell a lot of plasma to buy a good bottle these days. Maybe I'm misreading it, but since Guigal's La Doriane entered the stratosphere of points and price, it seems to have established the benchmark for "good." Ch...

Jonathan, I think you might like that SQN white more than you like the idea of it, depending on the food it's served with. I find central CA Viognier to show more northern Rhône-like (structured and elegant) than what's planted in the Southern reaches of France. Well-intended they may be, and it...

I kinda like the idea of tasting wines like these in a dinner setting. You're not obliged to drink only the wine they told you to drink with a particular course; I can't recall any dinner where a somm couldn't scrounge up another glass of something I liked from a previous course to replace a...

States of mind? States of confusion? If you'd promise to tell me later, it could also be a state of suspension) - Eden (I like my terroir all-encompassing: soil, weather, climate, history, who planted what, where, why, and when, the amount of chem trails trickling down from the airplane lanes...

I like leftovers as much as the next person, particularly when they've been left over the weekend, abandoned like a swaddled babe on the doorstep of the union rescue mission, with nobody around to ponder the notes and change the swaddling. When trundling along a snowy street, one can stumble...

Just read it this morning and I found myself "speed reading" through some of the scientific sections. Where's Professor Lipton when I need him to 'splain the deep stuff to me? Prior to reading the article, I'd always thought of smoke taint as an A/B, Yes/No, Evil/Eviler proposition, but if I...

Through no fault of my own, I bought a case of 2011 Quinta da Muradella Monterrei Tino Berrande at auction. It's from an obscure Spanish region so small that it could probably pass as a mesoclimate. I'd never tasted any of their wines before, but the reviews were good-verging-on-ecstatic, the...

Xogorka sounds like the name of an outer space monster from an unmade Ed Wood film. I've recently stumbled upon a couple of natty and quasi-natty (but natty enough) wines that were way better than I thought they'd be. I mean, I'm not totally surprised because the winemakers took some chem...

Thank you, Jonathan. This is the best description yet of the two years I lived in Dallas, TX. Sure, I could write a roman à clef of the ordeal for posterity and to sell to the pearl-clutchers of Highland Park who would buy it to see if their names were mentioned within, but the only real people...

Looks like some fun wines. I'm just wondering about the mechanics of these dinners -- how many people are gathered for each one, and are each of the wine selections from single bottles of wine, or are there multiples? What happens if a bottle is corked or oxidized? Are there backups? And from...

Having worn the vigneron boots in Malibu for about nine (attempted) harvests, I know exactly what you're going through. I tried biodynamic practices and the vines grew quite well, but the grapes weren't so good. Then I added more protection for the fruit while maintaining the vines and the birds...

Said ascension in the general direction of Burgundy doesn't make sense these days, even with Moroccan cinsault. However, should a neophyte (say, a collector of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon or Aussie Shiraz) feel the need to expand their horizons, an appropriately aspirational elevation in...

I recall Dennis Foley saying that "wine should be served at room temperature, with the presumption that the room is in a castle in Scotland in April." I've no compunctions about requesting an ice bucket for bottles brought to the table at the room temperature of a John Lautner or Richard...

Wasn't that a TV show on CBS back in the 1970s? They were two college dropouts (one from Stanford, the other from MIT) who lived in a Pontiac Grand Safari as they drove between adventures on the backroads of America. -Eden (IIRC, it was Martin Scorcese's first directing gig after leaving Roger...

What a coincidence! I’m just back from the Baywood Park farmer’s market and sure enough, I bought a cantaloupe and a watermelon from a dry-farmer from Creston, which is east of Paso Robles, but not as far as Cholame, known mostly for being where James Dean unexpectedly met Donald Turnipseed on...