Unfussy Wine Enthusiasts | Wine Reviews & Articles

Courtesy BluenoseWines.com We ran across a story in our local newspaper the Chronicle Herald this week about a Sonoma Winery with a local connection (read the story here ).  The core part of the piece mentioned that the winery owner, Paul Brasset helped Clos Du Bois get its start and was the winemaker at White Oak Winery. For anyone who has been to Sonoma, you immediately get hit with that smell.  The vineyards, the yeast, the diesel from the trucks.  It is a unique place.  The cool thing about our trip was that those two wineries were on our first day of tastings way back in 2004.  We started at Clos Du Bois with an awesome tasting staffer.  She basically set out our tour of the area by giving us the inside scoop on where she thought we should go based upon our tastes.  She pulled out a map and started going through the list, "Go here for sure, their Zins are awesome but skip these guys, they are jerks and their tasting room is filthy."  A...

Photos Courtesy Jenny Gammon We were very kindly invited to a preview of a new Pop-Up Boutique from our friends at Bishop's Cellar .  The main retail space is undergoing some renovations which are scheduled to last about a week but the staff have pulled together some really neat temporary digs just across the courtyard stocked with mostly value wines.  They were working on things right up to the media launch and the end result looks great (though they are making a few tweaks here and for the official opening on Sunday). The business is celebrating 10 years in business this month and have a lot on their plate.  We have had some real perks as wine bloggers and being invited to events like this are one of them.  I was handed a glass of Blomidon Estate's Cremant as soon as I arrived. We were off to a great start. I was able to spend some time with Matt Rogers ( @MattRogers222  on Twitter) the General Manager.  He showed me the plans for the new look ...

Courtesy Pinterest Wine Labels, Vineyards, Winery Equipment, Tasting Rooms....these pieces of what it means to go to a winery or market a winery are very visual.  To coincide with that Pinterest is the latest Social Media phenom that works as a visual bulletin board for Fans and Followers.  Pinterest has an overwhelmingly female audience....to the tune of 97%.  That means there are a huge number of wine fans on the platform (both male and female). That said, when you search for 'Wine' on Pinterest  you inevitably get a limited number of organized Pins associated with wine brands and wineries.  Yes, they "might" be on Pinterest but they are not there in any organized way that makes any given brand easy to find or more importantly, easy to share.  You have to search for things when those wineries adding their images to Pinterest don't do it right. Dig a little deeper and there are plenty of fan Boards of witty infographics, bottle shots, wine crafts, ...

So, wine blogging without Shannon is like playing in the big game with your star running back on the sidelines with a strained hammie.  Not a perfect situation by any means but you dig deep and play on. This wine was a purchase at the 2012 Port of Wines Festival where it stood out from the crowd with what we felt were strong flavours for Pinot Noir.  Well, there was some truth to that and some false memories.   The Ned from Marlborough is a nice version of Kiwi Pinot but there are some shortcomings. In the glass it is a fairly standard looking New Zealand Pinot which a light and clear colour profile with a thin structure.  Call it cranberry juice/strawberry kool-aid coloured maybe even a watery looking wine.  It is not unlike many that we have had from Marlborough so this has a similar visual.  It is a pale wine overall which screams cool climate Pinot. The nose is definitely Kiwi Pinot with loads of cherries and other berries.  The label say...