That's right, folks, the Beaujolais Nouveau is here! 

Every year, on the third Thursday of November, wine lovers around the world are able to taste the first wines of the recent harvest. Now, some people think that they're too good for Nouveau.  They think it is a light, insubstantial, and altogether frou-frouey wine.  Do not pay attention to such snobbery.  I happen to love wines from the Gamay grape. It's true that Nouveau can sometimes be disappointingly thin, and it is never a serious, ponderous wine.  But different wines have different places in one's life, and the place of Nouveau is one of simple, cheerful enjoyment.  And I can attest that this 2009 we just received is the best Nouveau I can ever remember trying.  The color is a beautiful, dark garnet.  The flavors are full fruited but also crisp and bright.

It is a happy coincidence that Nouveau is released one week before ... Read More »

Just a quickie from your faithful if embarrassingly inactive wine blogger.

I am thrilled to announce that three of my favorite wines of 2009, recently absent from our shelves, have returned.  As it happens, they are a white, a pink, and a red.

The white is the Ch. de la Dimerie Muscadet.  Now some people mistakenly think that Muscadet is sweet, probably because the name is a similar to Muscat, a white family of grapes usually made into dessert wines.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Muscadet is bone dry, with crisp, cleansing acidity and lovely minerality.  The wine comes from near where the Loire River empties into the Atlantic Ocean, and it's a perfect match for shellfish and other seafood.

The pink is the Domaine Rouge-Bleu Rosé.  I love the wines made by Jean-Marc Espinasse, and this was my favorite rosé of ... Read More »

Sitting down to dinner this week after returning from a family vacation, I wanted a nice bottle of wine.  What did I reach for?  The Domaine Rouge-Bleu "Dentelle ... Read More »

It has felt like a long time in coming, but at last we have the latest New Pioneer "Private Label" wine on our shelves.

Perched at the #1 spot on our May/June Top Ten, the wine is called "Original Zin," and we are dang happy ... Read More »

Toward the end of last week I bought something for myself that I've never bought before: a 3-liter bag of wine in a box.

Now put those prejudices aside.  I'm not talking about some grocery-store dreck.  I'm talking about Read More »

Well it looks as if the New Pi blog has become Steph Catlett's blog.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, really.  Steph is a lovely human being and I always enjoy reading whatever she writes.  But it doesn't seem fair that nobody ... Read More »

I'm old enough to remember the Gerald Ford presidency.  For a while he had a campaign where people were supposed to wear buttons that read "W I N."  The letters stood for "Whip Inflation Now!"  Just how consumers were ... Read More »

Well Hotsy-Totsy, we've got three new grower Champagnes on our shelves.  If you don't know what I mean by "grower Champagnes," check out my article on page 8 of the current New Pioneer Catalyst:

http://ww ... Read More »

A few quick thoughts for this week.

* In my last entry, I wrote about New Pioneer's new weekly sales promotions, and I urged you to pick up a bottle of the grassy, zippy, delicious Spanish white wine, El Perro Verde Verdejo Read More »

The title is a bit tongue-in-cheek.  Wine-industry geeks occasionally hype one grape varietal or another.  Merlot had its day, then Pinot Noir.  Now Malbec seems to be all the rage.  There was a time not long ago when Albari ... Read More »

Another quick one.  I'm not usually so bossy in my blog titles, but you need to buy the Alain Jaume Côtes du Ventoux either today or tomorrow.  Of course you can buy it after that (so long as it lasts on our shelves), but it's regularly $12, ... Read More »

Just a word or two here.  Refer back to my entry of 6.21.08.  The wine I wrote about then, the Frontera Carmenere, is back in stock, again for $4.99 a bottle, and everything I said in June is true again.  Yay.

All right, it's been far too long since I wrote something for this blog, so here I go.  Life sneaks up on you and keeps you running and then you think, Oh, I just have about a half-dozen minutes to spare.  But that's what blogs are about, mostly, ... Read More »

There's a new kid on the cheese block in Iowa, and you need to give it a try.  It's made in Oskaloosa, at a family-owned, humanely run farmstead creamery called Frisian Farms.

I use those descriptions purposefully.  It's good ... Read More »

Well, I've been out of town on family vacation, so apologies for the hiatus in my blogging.  The sound of my blogosphere fans clamoring for my next entry has been precisely the sound of one hand clapping.  Gratefully, Eric Creach boldly ... Read More »

Let us now praise Riesling, my single favorite grape variety.  Or at least, I'm going to praise it.

Frequently when I suggest Riesling to shoppers, the response is similar to what I get when I urge people ... Read More »

I had a graduate-student colleague who told me, years ago, that she had come to the point in here life where there were two things she did not want to run out of in her house: toilet paper and wine.

Her observation struck me as urbane and wise, ... Read More »

It's no secret that our economy has gone down the . . . , well, it just isn't very good.  Everything is getting more and more expensive.

Well, almost everything.  Here's something to cheer you out of your financial doldrums.&a ... Read More »

I was thinking about magic the other day.  Magic is all about transformation, really, one thing becoming another.  The thought occurred while I was making ice cream for the fam.  Sweetened milk in and of itself doesn't ... Read More »

 Why you should be drinking more pink wine.

All right, first off, I hate the word "blog." It's an ugly word. And I'm not too fond of the things themselves, either. It bewilders me that people feel the need not only to advertise themselves relentlessly (myspace, facebook), but to broadcast their da ... Read More »