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Costco Advent Calendar Wine #15: Flutter Rosé (Aude, France)
Fifteen wines into the 2025 Costco advent calendar, and finally we uncover a rosé! Thank goodness. I know it’s almost winter, but I will never turn down pink wine, no matter the season. The package of Flutter Rosé is appealing, too–its millennial-friendly label swathed with dusty pink, tasteful foil accents, and Luna moths. But will…
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Champagne Laurent-Perrier tasting at Pogo’s Wine & Spirits (Dallas, TX)
I used to credit most of Champagne’s popularity to marketing glitz. It’s all about the image, right? I guzzled cheap Cava and grocery-store Crémant, feeling smug and wise. But I was wrong. Good Champagne, alas, occupies its own tier of deliciousness among sparkling wines. The bubbles are finer, the texture richer, the flavors brighter and…
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Costco Advent Calendar Wine #13: Latitude 44 Pinot Noir (France)
A savage wine review is a delightful thing. I run across them most often on Reddit. Usually it’s written by someone who doesn’t like wine very much–and often, by someone who has resorted to drinking wine after running out of hard liquor. “Chewed raisins,” “prison toilet hooch,” “liquid vanilla candle.” (Or my new favorite natural…
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Review: Famille Hugel Gentil Alsace Blanc (2021)
Tonight’s wine is one of life’s most simple and accessible pleasures: A classic white blend from Alsace. This skinny green bottle smells and tastes amazing, costs little, and pairs with almost anything. I’ll go so far as to say that if you don’t like this style, there’s something wrong with you. I’m at Lavendou Bistro…
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Merlot Thursday: Le Petit Vauthier Saint-Émilion Grand Cru (2015)
After a long day of decisions and disappointments, sometimes you just feel like going for the sure thing. In this case, the sure thing is 10-year-old Right Bank Bordeaux, which has consistently been hitting just right. This 2015 Saint-Émilion came from the back room at The Wine Authority, where I spied the shipping box in…
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Review: Domaine Diochon Moulin-à-Vent Vieilles Vignes (2023)
Domaine Diochon of Beaujolais is something of a living dinosaur. It’s not just the vines that are old–so is their entire winemaking ethos. But there’s no Instagram reel or YouTube mini-doc to tell you all about it. In fact, Domaine Diochon doesn’t even have a website. Little has changed since the founding of the estate…
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Costco Advent Calendar Wine #10: Vin Twenty Three Red Blend (Côtes du Rhône, France)
The quest to taste all the Costco advent calendar wines continues! Next up is Bottle #10, a Côtes du Rhône blend called Vin Twenty Three. The label descriptors for these bottles are mostly breathless, AI-generated slop. But perhaps they may be valuable to someone who is trying to decide whether they will like this wine,…
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Merlot Thursday: Mouton Cadet “Les Terroirs” Bordeaux Rouge (2023)
Welcome to another #MerlotThursday, where we make a weeknight meal of a bottle of Merlot! (And usually some food, too.) Today’s wine is from the Mouton Cadet line of daily drinkers. The story of this label goes back to 1930, when a disastrous harvest resulted in wines that Baron Phillipe de Rothschild decided were not…
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Costco Advent Calendar Wine #8: The Conductor Chardonnay Pays d’Oc (France)
What if wine was more like groceries? What if it was just another foodstuff–a staple of shopping lists and a part of healthy adults’ daily diets? Many folks, particularly those in the wine industry, believe that would be a good thing. The United States has one of the lowest per capita wine consumption rates of…
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Merlot Thursday: Château Gaby “Silver Label” Canon-Fronsac Bordeaux (2014)
For this #MerlotThursday, I hopped the (metaphorical) pond back over to France for a Bordeaux break. The venue is Winestein’s Tasting Room in Grapevine, where I’ve landed after a long and exciting afternoon of trying out Texans wines. The wine is Château Gaby “Silver Label.” (It’s the second wine from the Château. The “Gold Label”…
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Review: Château Couhins “Les Demoiselles de Couhins” Pessac-Léognan Blanc (2019)
It’s time for some Thai food and Bordeaux–let’s go! Today’s bottle is a second wine from Château Couhins, a classified old Graves estate that is now owned by the French government’s wine research institute. This dry white wine is pale lemon with a frosty appearance (it’s very cold). Superbly aromatic with gooseberry (cats), pineapple, green…
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Merlot Thursday: Res Fortes “Merlot Madness” Vin de France (2021)
“Merlot Madness” may be the first #MerlotThursday wine to address the elephant in the room. “Unlike the Academy Award winning film ‘Sideways,’” the label reads, “we have always loved full fruit flavour, soft tannins, and easy drinkability.” Hey, we love all those things, too! A weekly dive into a glass of Merlot has reminded us…