Christy Frank

Old people would like to
play too!!!

..that matched the label – and the wine – very well) it was starting to get a bit apple-y with a bit of a high toned edge on the finish. Still, not a bad showing at all!! Wine – especially low intervention wines like this one – tend to be much tastier for much longer than we give them credit for. 4/

...or gas-based wine saving system – so that’s a lot of oxygen to be kicking around. The wine started out singing with all the spiced cherry crumble goodness it was showing back in December, but by the time I’d wrapped up dinner (a lovely lentil sweet potato, spinach soupy thing... 3/

The bottle has been hanging out open in the fridge since… December? Is that possible? I think it’s possible. I think this is the bottle from the New Years Eve early bird seating at Chambers . All that was left in the bottle was a wee small pour. And I hadn’t used any special pump ... 2/

Day 10/100: I’m really not trying to do this, but… it’s another Chianti!!! Podere @leboncie Chiesamonti Toscana IGT, Tuscany, Italy 2020. I’m pretty certain it could be called a Chianti, but it’s not because as seems to happen more and more across Europe, it’s not submitting for the appellation. 1/

The reports should simply call it what it is: Latest mouth diarrhea is XYZ.

Going deep into the wine geek rabbit whole, but chenin from the Anjou grown on schist, or Saumur aged in oak... love them. Santorini assyrtiko in oak... yes please!

Looks like I'll need to get the blog back together!

There are definitely producers that add up to the legal limit of Cab/Merlot to fluff up the wine and make it a little more friendly without food. But as you discovered - a class style + food - magnificent!! And love the word "vivacious!"

From 15+ years selling wine at retail in the US, both in NYC and up in the hamlets of the Berkshires, customers absolutely talk about oak - especially in the context of certain grapes (hello Chardonnay!) They often confuse oak + lees + malo, but requests for (or avoidance of) oaky wine is common.

…with a bit of flakey pie crust spice. It’s quite yummy. And need some food, which I am going to eat right now.

…more years than some of my WSET students have been alive. I LOVE sour cherries… apparently as a tasting note only. So this wine is not as sour as a sour cherry popped into the mouth straight from the container. It’s those cherries, but after they’ve been baked into a pie…

…for eating!!! And popped one in my mouth and realized, damn, these little fuckers are really sour. But of course I ate the entire container because I was not going to admit that I had no idea how sour sour cherries actually are. I mean, come on, I’ve been using the sour cherry tasting note for…

…this is a lovely, properly ripe but not too ripe Chianti that reminds me of going to the farmers market and buying a container of cherries and my husband warning me; those are sour cherries for baking not eating, are you planning to bake a pie? And I stubbornly said, I love sour cherries…

Day 9/100: I really need to make a point of doing these posts on a daily basis. They bring me joy. Pouring something into a glass, taking a sip and writing some words is apparently hardwired into my brain’s dopamine receptors. Or something like that. In any case…

Years and years of shop floor experience - textural descriptions light up way more eyes than fruit baskets. Velvet vs denim…. almost anyone can get a grip on that.

So a quick question for the early birds in the BlueSky worl: for longer posts…. Thread them out? Or link back to a blog or newsletter (like we used to do in the olden days)

Limina spaces! @winejames.bsky.social

It wasn’t a chenin. It’s was Pinot Gris. With 20 days skin contact. Definitely not the chenin. And definitely has evolved quite nicely in the weeks or months…or however long it’s been open.

Or maybe it’s just what I imagine it smell like because honestly, I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever even been to midnight mass.) I liked it quite a lot…. but it really didn’t taste like the chenin I remembered. How odd that it would evolve this way!

And then I looked at the bottle. And well, oops..

Spiced peach, orange rind, Cantaloup with very lightly picked rind, what I call church spices (that incense-like scent that wafts from that thing the priest flips around during midnight mass… or at least did the one time I went to midnight mass.

So I poured out a glass, and was like….hmmmm, that’s gotten quite dark in color quite quickly. Took a cautious sniff…it smelled quite good. Took a sip. Remarkably good and fresh for such a fluffy-cloud-and-sunset-colored chenin.

Day 8/100: Grabbed a bottle of Amoise chenin from the cooler that had been open for a bit. It had been showing a little reductive and I wanted to see how it evolved over the course of a day or two. Or as turned out to be reality, a month… maybe two..

I don’t think you need to be an expert to know that prices on Colombian coffee will go up. Beans from other places will fill the gap, but this will especially hurt small us-based roasters that have beans already in en route… tariffs will need to be paid as soon as they arrive.

Their table wines are a revelation!

Getting into the #winesky swing of things with a link to my wine shop's (Copake Wine Works) newsletter. Excellent prices on Sugrue South Downs bubbles, one of my all-time favorite English sparkling wines. Wait...let me fix that: one of my all time favorite sparkling wines. Period.
conta.cc/42vD5Dv

There is! There definitely is! Stay tuned!

The big question for today's 100 Day Project wine:

Red, white, pink, or orange?

And then the next question: still or sparkling?

Day 7/100: Dunno why, but the name “valvin muscat” sounds vaguely naughty. It was developed in 2006 up at Cornell so it’s rather new to the scene. This is a very lightly sparkling version from Ravines that could give a whole lot of Proseccos a run for their money. #wine

If you’re near Copake, NY, you’re invited… whenever it actually happens.