TASTING WINE VS. DRINKING WINE – IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?

  Hey, I don’t mean to sound like a fossil, but age and experience does often give one a sense of perspective. So I am going to go back to times that may seem so long ago. But, in reality, these times were only about twenty years ago. That is the time that wines started […]

THE PERFECT WINE?

The prefect wine? This is the question posed in Forbes Life Summer 2012 edition. Often wines are pronounced perfect for reasons that may not be perceptible to many of us. Consider the following: Now we have another proclamation of the perfect wine, but this time with no number!  So just maybe it could be creditable.  Well, […]

Retrospective Review Volume I, Number 3 (December-January 1979-1980)

In this our third issue, Edward Lazarus kicked off with “Woes of a Burgundy Drinker” speaking to the fact that back then a lot of wine was spoiled by excessive heat either in transit or after arrival when many wines were stored in unrefrigerated warehouses. In Southern California, there are many weeks each year when temperatures range between 80-100 degrees. Northern California is generally cooler, but even so, temperatures can reach the same highs. This is disaster for wine storage – particularly Burgundy. Burgundies, both red and white, are among the wines most sensitive to excessive heat.

And, 30-40 years ago, many, if not most, wine storage facilities used by wholesalers and distributors were not refrigerated. So true to our mission we were straightforward with our call “must consumers deal with spoiled wines as well?” Today things have changed as now wines are transported in a temperature-controlled environment to their destination , which is temperature-controlled as well. We’ve made progress and today, thankfully, spoiled wines are a rarity.