Vinum est Salus
I once was lost, but now I drink.
Cold is here. Time to switch to red. Angeline Reserve Pinot. Best Pinot I’ve ever had under $20. Great fruit and enough weight to be serious with food.
New by the glass list at Ranch Steakhouse. Nearly completely revamped. Nine white, 2 rose, 15 red, and 2 Champagnes, including a Grower Champagne.
New by the glass list at Stella Modern Italian. Owner Lori Tyler has also added a few bottles, including some new Italian that aren’t currently available anywhere else in the metro.
New by the glass list at The Metro week of 9/12. Check out Chanrion Cote de Brouilly and Hippolyte Reverdie Sancerre.
Coombsville now 16th Napa AVA.
The world’s oldest bottle of wine?
Sad news last week as we discovered that Cathy Stoller, wife of William Stoller and one of the principals of Stoller Vineyards, passed away after a head injury sustained as a result of a fall.
Vinography looks at Jay Miller’s less than honorable departure from the Wine Advocate.
A taxonomy of wine snobs Funny, sad, and true.
Excellent article on Japan’s wine comic book.
The Lists are my best effort to make wine accessible around the Oklahoma City metro, often including Edmond, Yukon, Norman, and those other outlying provincial locales that scare the hell out of people who don’t like Toby Keith or wear camo. Usually they are offered in no particular order, as it’s often difficult to judge who has the best overall staff or best overall list, primarily because “best” is often tied to preference. In the case of restaurants, I can think of two that have two or three phenomenally knowledgable people on staff who are surrounded by co-workers who know next to nothing about wine. It seems pointless to try to create some bizarre calculus that clearly designates one better than another. Basically, I’ve compiled lists of places where it’s hard to go wrong if you ask questions, including, unfortunately, “Can I speak to someone who understands wine?” As for the stores, Oklahoma City has hundreds of liquor stores, but very few take wine seriously. I’ve tried to fairly represent the ones that do, but if you think I missed one, feel free to let me know: greg@winereverend.com.
This is a random collection of resources that I find useful. I subscribe to four wine sites/magazines. I’ll include links just in case you’re curious, but all require a subscription to get very deep into them. I’ll update this as things change, but the big dogs in the industry don’t change a great deal, especially in publishing. I’m also including blogs and twitter connections that I use. I’ll mark them as local where appropriate. The wine business is massive, and just learning to navigate it takes a lifetime, and that’s not including learning all the general information about wine (terms, varietals, regions, processes, etc.). We’re all learning all the time, so feel free to send suggestions: greg@winereverend.com.
Tool #1 for me is my Moleskine Wine Journal
I’ve tried to find an iPhone app that was good for wine tastings, but hell, who wants to type on a tiny screen while trying to drink? The best app I’ve found for notes and photos (is not Evernote, so shut it) is Springpad. The app includes a wine option when creating a new note, and the supplied fields are pretty handy. It also has a barcode scanner with a pretty extensive database. The Chrome extension (if you’re living in the 21st century) and the website make this a ridiculously useful app, and not just for wine.
Wine Spectator is one of the industry’s most trusted sources, especially for news. Depending on whom you ask, you might hear that the ratings are bought. I simply don’t care whether they are or not. I’ve never had a 90+ wine that I thought sucked, so trust them as you will.
Wine Enthusiast. Robert Parker has established himself and his publication as one of the premiere news and ratings journals in the world. Again, you can hear the arguments that he likes big, dense, overly simple wines because he smokes cigars and drinks too much whiskey, but I just don’t care. I trust his ratings as well. You just have to know what you’re getting.
Stephen Tanzer is newer on the scene than the previous two, and he’s developed a reputation as an honest, conservative rater and reviewer of wines. You’ll not see 98-100 very often from Tanzer, so just know a 90-93 is remarkable.
There are others, of course, but I’ve had mixed success with Wine Enthusiast and Food & Wine. For the latter, the wine part of the magazine usually consists of the wonderfully erudite Lettie Teague. I’m linking her site below, because when she does write for them, the wine information is excellent. When she doesn’t, well…
Eric Asimov is the wine writer for the New York Times. When he’s not writing about shit I don’t understand, he’s writing informative, interesting, lucid articles on trends, personalities, and wines.
The aforementioned Lettie Teague covers a broad spectrum of wine information, including the culture of wine and pop culture related to wine. She’s an entertaining and informative writer. Always worth a read.
As part of his work for Michael Skurnik wines, Terry Theise, likely the world’s foremost expert and evangelist for Riesling, writes his vintage reports wherein he reviews hundreds of wines from Germany, France, and Austria. He focuses on Riesling, Gruner-Veltliner, and Grower’s Champagne, but you’ll find information about all sorts of Alsatian grapes as well. The vintage reports don’t read like stale, dry wine reports. They are funny, informative, educational, and simply some of the best writing about wine in the world.
Alder Yarrow started his site, Vinography, in January 2004. Since then, he’s compiled some of the best information on one of the web’s most comprehensive wine blogs. Thorough, informative (if a bit cluttered), and insightful, Yarrow’s site can suck you in and keep you there for hours.
Local: Clayton Bahr tweets as WineDr. He works for Putnam Wines, Oklahoma’s rep for Kermit Lynch wines, an importer of some of France’s premiere wines. Bahr is our local go-to guy about French wines, and winemaking in general. As a bonus, he uses twitter for some interesting alternative music suggestions as well.
Jancis Robinson is one of the most respected experts on wines in the world. She writes for the Financial Times, and compiled the The Oxford Companion to Wine, 3rd Edition.
Wine Reverend is a personal project of freelance journalist and wine lover Greg Horton. As part of my normal journalistic life, I noticed there were stories that fell through the cracks, either because they weren’t focused on a particular demographic or because there simply isn’t enough space to tell all the good stories. Wine Reverend will help create space for a few more of those stories.
Wine Reverend will also cover the amazing variety of wines available in Oklahoma, both new and old, and at every price point. Because Oklahoma is a retail driven state, we will feature wine shops that work hard to provide you excellent and/or offbeat selections at good cost. We will also focus on restaurants that take wine seriously and offer their lists with an eye toward enhancing food, not gouging diners.
If you haven’t noticed “the lists” yet, they will be a permanent feature on the site, but the information will change in them regularly. We hope to focus on niche lists (e.g., best 20 under $10, best Italian list, holiday wines, etc.), and highlight the retailers and restaurateurs who contribute to Oklahoma’s wine culture.
This is a wine blog. I am by no means a wine professional; I have no credentials, certifications, pins, trophies, or ribbons. I am a writer, professor, and philosophy geek who happens to drink more wine than most people. Because of the writing, I’m often asked for advice on wine. Let me be clear. I’d prefer to give the askers a list of people who know far more than I, but the real wine experts I know are already pretty busy. Along the way, we will highlight some of those people, and the resources links will give you twitter accounts and blogs from people who I am certain know more than me. I have access going for me and a long history of writing. I don’t pretend to be anything else. Enjoy.
