THE WINE EXPERIENCE & THE JOY OF OLD WINES

  Recently in a flurry of emails between several very experienced wine drinkers there were many questions and opinions about old wines including decanting, bottle variation, and different opinions on the same wine by different tasters. All the opinions were from people who have spent their lives tasting and drinking the best wines in the […]

PEOPLE AND WINE AGING TOGETHER

What is the correlation?  Well, the fact is that people have varying life spans as do wines. Most people understand their aging process, but very few people understand the aging process of wines. In reality, most people could care less about how wines age. This creates a tremendous opportunity for those of us who love […]

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.