The 2007 Saxum Syrah Booker Vineyard was the winning bottle in the November installment of Pick My Next Bottle. The wine was decanted for an hour and served with beef stew on a frigid night in Seattle. Saxum Vineyards is located in the Paso Robles AVA of Central California. Founded in the early 2000’s by Justin Smith, a young winemaker…
The November installment of Pick My Next Bottle focuses on some of the very best domestic Syrah producers. As I mentioned in the first installment, the purpose of this series is to provide insight into specific wines or producers you may currently have in your cellar. The winning bottle will be opened this weekend and a Bottle Note will be…
Welcome to the 3rd, annual installment, of the Zinfandel Chronicles Power Rankings. The intent behind the list was to rank wineries based on the buzz and excitement they create in the wine collecting crowd. The rankings are entirely subjective based on my observations on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Wine Spectator, Wine Berserkers and Cellartracker. I’ve ranked the wineries below and…
The December installment of Pick My Next Bottle focuses on some of the very best domestic Syrah producers. As I mentioned in the first installment, the purpose of this series is to provide insight into specific wines or producers you may currently have in your cellar. The winning bottle will be opened this Saturday and a Bottle Note will be…
In the spirit of the upcoming holidays I am making a list of wines I’d like to see made. In some cases it is a winemaker that I would like to see make a wine from a new varietal and in other cases it is an existing varietal from a different vineyard source. Lets get this list started with a…
The much anticipated release letter from Saxum arrived today. Not much to note other than well-deserved high praise from critics, pricing consistent with the release last Summer and perhaps the addition of concrete tanks in the winemaking process. I’ve blogged about Saxum previously in Zinfandel Chronicles Power Rankings and Winery Mailing Lists: The Fab 5. Hard to go wrong on…
The buzz surrounding mailings lists has grown very quiet over the last four years. This is due in no small part to the recession and corresponding drop in disposable income that many consumers have experienced. The days of waiting years to acquire wines from the likes of Colgin, Bryant and Quilceda Creek have largely gone away. I suspect the next…