Matt Stamp

Only…

Despite unseasonal early fall weather reaching into the 90s, our core mission remained intact: drink a lot of Nebbiolo, a quintessential cold-weather wine, and wash it down with some home-cooked osso buco and polenta. Accepted, happily! Winemaker Dan Petroski (Massican, Larkmead), vintner Bob Bressler, and a crew of current and former Napa sommeliers—Jimmy Hayes, Dennis Kelly MS, Sur Lucero MS, Jason Heller MS,…

Atauta

“This is one of the most desolate places in Europe; it’s more isolated than Finland, even.” In dying light, Dominio de Atauta winemaker Almudena Alberca and I sped along wintry, washboard roads, rugged and empty, in the backcountry of Soria province, some 50 kilometers from the Duero’s mountain headwaters. Here, along the far eastern edge of the Ribera del Duero DO, we explored small parcels of …

“I never lift to my lips a glass of this noble wine without seeing faces that are gone, and hearing the voices and the laughter and the jests that are no more.”
-Silas Weir Mitchell, A Madeira Party (1895)

Great Madeira is a bulwark against corrosion and timeless amid our half-lives of gentle decay.  It is inscrutable: to reduce it to tasting notes and the crude ephemera of snapshot opinions or scores seems…

Germany established its first tourist “wine route”, the Deutsche Weinstrasse, in 1935 in the Pfalz.  The road officially spans 85 km, beginning just south of Worms and ending at the “Wine Gate” (Deutsches Weintor) in Schweigen, at the French border.  The Pfalz’s most historic wineries and best-known vineyards are located in the region’s northern sector, the Mittelhaardt.  Life appears…

IMPORTANT NOTE: This article was written in 2012, and the US Federal tax laws changed significantly in 2017—especially with regard to individual deductions. We highly recommend that anyone who has a sole proprietorship or corporation, or is itemizing deductions, see a tax professional in their state. No consideration is made in this article for other countries' tax laws.

Many sommeliers, at some point or another…

Marche and Abruzzo

Verdicchio, Castelli di Jesi and Matelica

Driving south from Verona along the Adriatic Coast, the land flattens as we pass through the fertile plains of Emilia-Romagna only to rise up again, jutting and carving upwards into the sky.  The coastal areas in Veneto and Emilia-Romagna are unremarkably level, but in the Marche the land becomes mountainous and hilly; the central Apennines push out toward the…

The Ministry Official: To comply with the regulations, you must produce your wine solely from the single local variety.  This is to preserve the integrity of the appellation, to preserve the terroir.

The Italian: No!  You stifle my creativity; you deprive me of my freedom!  You are heartless and sterile, and your watch is cheap!  I am not a German!

The Ministry Official: Fine.  You can add 15% of anything else you want.  Just…

Did you know: Berry Bros. and Rudd started out as a coffee shop?  A single living tree may have sired every coffee plant in the Western Hemisphere?  German coffee-drinkers disgrace the national pastime of beer?  French coffee is terrible?  Read on!....

The Origins of Coffee

In the beginning, the Coffea arabica tree grew wild on the mountainsides of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) but the precise moment that man ascertained…

Amidst stacks of old books and lore at Hanzell Vineyards, a few old mid-century magazines have gathered dust, yellowing over time.  The Wine-Butler, the "official organ" of the Guild of Sommeliers, published through the 1950s and 1960s--I do not know when the last issue hit the stands--is a trove of insights into the British wine trade of the time, and the minds of sommeliers. Like us, the sommeliers of the time struggled…

A Little Background            

            Normandy, located east of Brittany and north of the Loire Valley, is a coastal region along the English Channel, whose native populace can claim Viking ancestry.  In 911, King Charles III of France ceded Normandy to Scandinavian invaders led by Rollo, who was formally baptized as Robert and pledged as vassal to defend the French king.  The line of Robert’s successors, the Dukes of Normandy (Norman…

I recall approaching the examination room for the first time several winters ago in Toronto, as an introductory candidate from the Midwest.  I had the opportunity for the first time in person to meet and to learn from a Master Sommelier.  I felt awe and reverence at that moment for these gentlemen with red pins on a scale normally reserved for gods and natural disasters; I recall praying throughout that first terrifying…