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      To all Wine Exchangers, There’s way more to tell here than would comfortably fit into a typical email offer in this day of short ‘blasts’ of info. Burgundy is an ancient place that doesn’t necessarily fit into the modern quick-hit framework conveniently.  There are always stories within stories that, more than any […]

    To all Wine Exchangers, “Domaine Grand Veneur’s Les Champauvins stretches on 34 ha classified in Côtes du Rhône. The plots are located in the northern border of Châteauneuf du Pape, exactly 3 meters outside the appellation.  A small lane of rocks going through the rocky plateau has been decided to be the AOC […]

    To all Wine Exchangers, Sicily’s smoldering. There’s literally too much good stuff coming from ‘the island’ these days, it’s getting tough to keep track of it all.  Etna, killer whites, ‘mountain’ Nero d’Avola, you name it, Sicily is hammering it. The guys that were ‘there’ first, however, are also crushing it, including today’s […]

  To all Wine Exchangers, “A custom cuvee created by importer Eric Solomon, the 2015 IGP Cotes Catalanes Novellum is a smokin’ value that’s made from 100% Chardonnay that spent three months in tank (on Viognier lees) followed by three months in barrel. Tasting like it cost three times the price, it offers lots of […]

    To all Wine Exchangers, Remember the good ole days when wines like Troplong Mondot, Clos Fourtet and Pavie Macquin were under $40 bucks?  Well, whether you’ve forgotten them, or maybe just weren’t around for the early 90’s, todays ‘flashback’ offering comes from the same neighborhood, carries a 94-point score and sells for even […]

  To all Wine Exchangers, Here in SoCal, surfers and skiers have a saying… Go Big or Go Home. Yeah. It’s ours.  Whether it’s a gnarly wave or a gnarly mogul, the thought behind it was the same. Step up your game, especially if you have the ability to do so. In wine-speak, it has […]

To all Wine Exchangers, Keeping with the South American theme from this morning’s offer, one of Chile’s great icon wines is back (on pre-arrival) and better than ever! The estate is on a roll and the 2014 may be the finest Almaviva released yet.  The project, originally a meeting of the minds between Baron Philippe […]

To all Wine Exchangers, Hmm…where does one start when dealing with something that is simply unprecedented? Nothing like trying to sell pricey Malbec from Chile (not Argentina), in a Burgundy-shaped bottle, from a company that had, until recently, been more known for its quantity as opposed to quality. But, then again, we’ve encountered nothing like […]

To all Wine Exchangers, It’s Silver Oak Day! Silver Oak’s 2013 Alexander Valley bottling was just released this past weekend at their winery in Sonoma and it’s once again a star of the vintage. It’s a big boy. In fact, this is one of the bigger, deeper, more profoundly structured versions of their Alexander Valley […]

    To all Wine Exchangers, What’s wrong with this picture?  Well, if you have studied maps of Burgundy at length, you may have noticed that the lines of the ’village wine’ demarcations run fairly consistent with the bottoms of the hillsides and, here, abut the D974 on both sides…except for one spot. You might […]