‘Tis the season for giving – the time of year for fa-la-la-ing, mistletoe-ing and all the other festivities Bing and Nat sing about. But let’s be honest: Decking the halls and making merry can be downright exhausting. So in betwixt the tree trimming and holiday caroling, why not give yourself…
Sometimes, just sometimes, big holiday celebrations can feel like a bit of a grind. Whoops, did we say that out loud? It’s not that we don’t love our families — we do. But we suspect that you’d agree that occasionally these annual gatherings can feel like more of an obligation…
The wine topic that everyone seems to be obsessed with this week is what goes best with turkey (Thanksgiving is next Thursday, or hadn’t you heard?). Not us. There’s still plenty of time to tackle that topic, and if you tend to procrastinate as much as we do, then you’ll…
Blind tastings: They’re not just for sommeliers anymore. It’s true. A significant part of becoming an advanced level sommelier involves learning to identify wines the hard way — by relying 100 percent on the wine’s appearance in the glass, smell and taste. Given that you are probably not, nor are…
How come no one ever seems to talk about how expensive it is to be a wine drinker? Think about it: Thanksgiving is a scant three weeks from now, and according to the near-endless refrain of shopping mall adverts, Christmas shows up in precisely 54 days. Heap on top of…
Like it or not, for years people have habitually lumped wines from Colorado into its own special (read: inferior) category of domestic winemaking. Bottles from other, more mainstream wine-producing regions in the U.S., like California, Oregon, and Washington State, seem to score all the props, while the Centennial state gets…
Apart from rosé, is there any wine more universally misunderstood and underappreciated than riesling? There simply aren’t enough column inches allotted us to spout off the multitude of reasons this varietal is one of only three whites worthy of being classified as a “noble” grape, but its year-round drinkability, epic…
Last Friday night, at a pop-up speakeasy on the rooftop of Ghost Plate & Tap, Denver wine lovers had their first opportunity to sample the latest cool-kid offering from the Infinite Monkey Theorem: Monkey Shine, the winery’s brand-spanking-new keg wine. IMT certainly isn’t the first to join the burgeoning wine-on-tap…
It’s finally October, and our crisp, cooler weather serves as a harbinger of harvest season. This time of year also has our mouths watering for fall’s more luxurious, soul-satisfying menus. And you know what that means, right? Richer food calls for wines that can step up to the challenge. If…
Why is it that so many of Denver’s more casual, moderately priced restaurants have wine lists that make the oenophiles among us want to just give up and order a beer? It’s as if the people in charge of designing these lists decided that when entrees cost somewhere in the…
Congratulations, wine lovers: In 2010, the good ol’ U. S. of A. officially consumed more wine than France for the first time ever. And as we predicted earlier this year, America’s love affair with pink wine just keeps getting hotter — evidenced by the fact that exports of rosé (and…
With Labor Day behind us and summer’s sun-soaked days and sizzling temperatures vanishing before our eyes, we aren’t traditionally all that psyched to welcome the month of September with open arms. This year, though, we’re seeing things differently, given the tantalizing array of wine events around the state in the…
With Labor Day right around the corner, summer is officially drawing to a close. But there are still lots of warm, languid evenings to look forward to before we say hello to fall. And while you’ve clearly figured out that porch pounders are the perfect early evening sipper on a…
For some of us, spending an hour strolling up and down the aisles of our neighborhood wine store is like a little slice of heaven. Between filling up carts with our latest vino obsessions and ogling that magnum of Veuve we can’t possibly afford, a wine-buying spree is perhaps second…
A great many learned individuals spend a significant amount of their time advancing the notion that the enjoyment of wine is an incredibly serious, sophisticated pursuit. And some of these people, having spent countless hours in pursuit of the ever-nebulous nuances of what makes a particular wine great, work hard…
It’s a well-known fact in the wine industry that the majority of consumers decide which bottle of fermented grape juice to spring for based solely on their attraction to the label. If you’d count yourself as a member of that particular buying demographic, we feel compelled to tell you’re generally…
We sommeliers have a tendency to spend an inordinate amount of time sussing out all kinds of weird and interesting wines (partly because it’s our job, partly because we’re total wine geeks). And most of the time, those slightly off-kilter bottles are best appreciated by, well, let’s face it –…
We almost choked as we typed the words “tired of rosé” just now. While there’s simply no other wine we’d rather drink on a sultry summer evening, we’re willing to concede that not everyone is as equally enamored as we are. More optimistically, we prefer to consider alternative scenarios to…
So many delicious rosés, so few languid, warm-weather days to enjoy them. This is simultaneously our favorite and most dreaded part of the summer; the temps are sizzling (which we love), but the days are getting shorter (which we hate). The sad fact of the matter is that there are…
Last month we attended the first annual Colorado Winefest – Denver, and for the first time tasted a number of truly delicious, locally produced wines we could recommend to you without pause. So you can certainly understand how we were legitimately fired up about an already scheduled wine-tasting trip to…
True story: We recently made the acquaintance of the creator of a local website dedicated to all things male. After we inquired about the topics typically featured on the site, the author responded with something along the order of “You know…guy stuff. Bars, sports, beer, things like that.” Intrigued, we…
Last week we celebrated the official first day of summer, and the veritable heat wave that followed only served to drive the point home. Several days of 90+ degree temps later, we found ourselves forced to confront what surely must be the most pressing question of the season: What sort…
