Recent content by Steve Lanum

"Cockage"? Freudian slip?

Maybe I have an odd sense of humor but I got a good laugh out of this Cellartracker tasting note: 2010 Arnot-Roberts Syrah 'Clary Ranch' A well made wine but not our cup of tea. Could easily have been picked as a French wine if tasted blind.

Ditto. I poured more 2002 Fevre Chablis down the drain than I drank. That includes all the grand crus. Never again will Fevre cross my threshold.

Appearing in, of all things, "the Dolce & Gabbana luxury magazine" is a short interview with Arianna Occhipinti (Google "swide arianna occhipinti"). Has anyone here read her recently published autobiography? Anyone know if it's set for translation into English?

This prompted me to look at that offer and those prices. '98 Clape for $200? Mine haven't been that enjoyable, and I'd be very surprised if my 1999s turn out to be $250 experiences. 2002 Verset for $165? I had six bottles of that--they were nice wines that showed true Verset character but the...

I didn't know that 2010 was such a ripe vintage (amongst the highest alcohol levels ever?) in those parts.

Artful, perhaps not, but heck, that note tells me more about that wine than most of the fruit-, flower-, and babble-filled notes some people get paid to write.

"Verset 1998 Cornas - Gene bought a bottle of 1998 Clape but this is what was delivered instead... um, sure, OK!" I've got to shop there.

Call me a nut but I don't think four years of college should be all about finding a job. I really recommend that you and your daughter listen to both of the audio links embedded in the paragraph you'll find here...

I am having a really hard time picturing the interaction that must have taken place between guest and proprietor at Vivant (and I feel the latter would have recognized the former).

KLWM doesn't "owe" me low prices, for a start. However, in the age of the internet, even a dim bulb can see that Foillard's Morgon costs about 19 Euros, retail, in France which, at a generous exchange rate, comes out to about 26 yankee dollars. The price, including sales tax, should you decide...

Maybe someone was listening because the 2010 vintage doesn't have the extra KLWM strip above the front label: the importer is listed in small print neatly at the bottom of the label. (Of course this change came at the cost of an increase in price!)

So...retailers are taking it in the shorts; is any of this reduced demand (my own is certainly gone) finding its way back to the producers? I'm guessing that if the prices they were able to command had "dropped dramatically" as well we might be a lot closer to a resolution. (And FWIW I quickly...

French wine bureaucracy runs amok again. This seems to be the kind of thing Joe Dressner would have had a field day with (in French, it describes the substantial fine to which Olivier Cousin may be subjected for having dared describe the origin of his grapes on his cartons). Scroll through the...

Asimov on Joe: http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/joe-dressner-an-importer-with-no-use-for-pretense-dies-at-60/?ref=dining