Nathan Vrooman and Rachel Stinson are the winemaking team at Stinson, sourcing fruit from the Stinson estate vineyard as well as other Virginia vineyards. The Stinson vineyard is an historic one by Virginia standards, having been first planted by Gabriele Rausse over 40 years ago.  Unfortunately, those old vines suffered from leafroll virus, so fat

I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format. They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read […]

I’ve been wondering whether it’s tasteless to recommend a cocktail called Corpse Reviver during a pandemic. Then I realised the UK Health Secretary can’t or won’t answer how many NHS staff have died and some police forces think it’s okay to start threatening to check the contents of people’s shopping baskets without […]

Hello Costco wine fans. Today we have the latest vintage of the Kirkland Carneros Pinot Noir. Historically, not a favorite of the blog among the Kirkland Pinot Noirs. We had a few vintages of this bottle we liked some time ago but lately it’s been falling a little flat. It’s too bad since the price […]

Born in Texas, Randy Hester learned winemaking in Napa Valley before returning home to start a winery in Austin, Texas, named after his grandfather.  He purchases fruit from Texas’ prime vineyards and then crafts some very good wines.  The techniques include cold soaks, some whole clusters, fermenting with native yeast and extended aging in French

At this point, 1WD readers are probably sick of me mentioning my previous trip to Uruguay and the obligatory capybara references, but I’m not at all sick of it… And so with a fairly recent online tasting of Uruguayan Tannat reds (led by friend of 1WD and Master Sommelier Peter Granoff), this event recap is […]