Truth and fiction: Ross Schwartz, screenwriter of Bottle Shock, the movie
Dr. Vino says:

“I was a lawyer for 25 years; I’m different than everyone else in this room because I am not interested in the truth.”

So Ross Schwartz told the assembled group at theSymposium for Professional Wine Writersin Napa last week. Schwartz, formerly an entertainment lawyer based in Los Angeles, wrote the screenplay for the movie Bottle Shock, which stars Alan Rickman and recently appeared on DVD. It loosely depicts the events of the Paris tasting of 1976 when a Chateau Montelena Chard

A Sense of Place
By Eric Asimov says: Tracking old vines in California.
The Passing of the American Wine Blog Awards
Tom Wark says:

This is probably as good as time as any to make a little announcement.

This will be the last year I host the American Wine Blog Awards.

Upon their conclusion this year, I will pass ownership on to theOpenWine Consortium, which will both own the rights to them and be responsible for their administration if they choose to continue them.

It's not a matter of the American Wine Blog Awards being too difficult to administer. Nor it is a matter of them taking too much time to administer. It's a ma

Malolactic Fermentation in February: Winemaker Journal for February 2009, by Jeff Miller

says:

byJeff MillerofArtisan Family of Wines(Red Côte Rosé, 7 Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars)

I haven’t written a journal entry for awhile, since things were pretty low key after the rush of harvest, and there wasn’t much to say. But things are beginning to pick up a bit.

For the 2008 vintage, it’s been something of a waiting game while the wines complete malolactic, or secondary, fermentation, the process where special bacteria convert the malic acid into lactic acid. For whites, differe

Bottle Shock shocked my enjoyment level… it was good!
vinesugar.com says: I’ve been far removed from the marketing noise of the wine industry and I prefer it that way. I hadn’t heard of the movieBottle Shockuntil I saw it at my local Blockbuster.

“Bottle Shock” is the story of Chateau Montelena in 1976 when it’s Chardonnay beat the French in a blind tasting. It was the major turning point for the American wine industry.

Any movie that centers around wine will inevitably get dubbed “Sideways 2″ which is unfortunate really. When you look back at Sideways, that movie was r

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Late with a Late Harvest
Micheal Seraphin says: I realized that January had literally come and gone and I had not made an entry for the month. This evening I was in the mood for something sweet. Fortunately, or not, I noticed that I had nothing sweet to eat in my apartment. I did, although, forget that I had a wine in my basement, and some wine on the sweeter side at that. I didn’t think I wanted a port, and when searching through my wine stock, I found this 2005 Late Harvest Chenin Blanc fromTerra Blanca. This wine came in my latest shipme