Kimberly
CCA Staff Gratitudes

Kimberly

I'm thankful for:  Friends

CCA Staff Gratitudes
Kimberly
Forged by Fire

In lieu of our normal monthly newsletter, given our home base in Northern California, we at Charles Communications Associates, representing wineries from our own backyard and around the world, dedicate this missive to those affected by the Northern California fires of October 2017

Forged by Fire
Friends
If You Can't Stand The Heat, Get Out of the ...

The Napa Valley has recently taken a lot of heat – both literally, due to the serious temperature spike that hit the valley earlier this month, as well as figuratively from those who think the aberrant fluctuation spelled doom for the entire region’s harvest.  The media has been eager to report this story, which we can all understand – what’s sexier than a potential climate change story about America’s most recognized wine region? Fortunately for the consumer, cooler heads prevail for those of us on the ground, and I wanted to share the perspective from someone who has been around the vineyard block.

If You Can't Stand The Heat, Get Out of the Cellar
Kimberly
10 Medium Intensity Questions With Faith ...

Meet Faith Armstrong, the winemaker behind Onward and Farmstrong wines. As refreshing as the Pétillant Naturel she makes of Malvasia Bianca, many of the words used to describe Faith's wine could be used to describe the winemaker herself. Honest, vibrant, unfiltered, true to her origins, bright, complex. 

10 Medium Intensity Questions With Faith Armstrong of Onward & Farmstrong wines
Hillary
Cooking with Cannabis

With that infamous hippie holiday around the corner, Charles Communications explores how Pot d'Huile has revolutionized the marijuana edibles market for both medicinal benefits and gastronomic delight.

Cooking with Cannabis

Wine

Wine Columns for Weeks of April 4 and 11

Wine columns these last two weeks continue to be awash with whites. With winter long gone - and evidently sick of "wines that stain your teeth" (as a salesperson at Sherry-Lehmann puts it in Wednesday's NYT) - writers are showering us with white Burgundies, Viogniers, Rieslings, Gruners...as well as more obscure grapes like Loureiro and Moschofilero. As always with typically po-faced wine writing, the more entertaining copy tends inexorably to the unexpected. Most worthy of mention is the SF Chronicle's cheeky-chap duo of Camper English and W. Blake Grey, who (if you read Jerry Shriver's Cheers blog) are providing better value than a 2005 Columbia Crest Two Vines Sauvignon Blanc.

Camper manages to turn an innocuous item on the San Francisco World Spirits Competition into a come-on ("chances are you can find something good from the [winners] list in your price range...if your price range is $2,600, call me; I'm single"). Not to be outdone, and with baseball season upon us, Blake gleefully tries to stuff as many bats and pitches into the Chronicle wine section as Jon Bonné will let him - going so far as to devote an entire article to the selection of wines at our local stadia.

Wine Columns for the Week of March 28, 2007

With the fading of winter, wine picks and writers' hearts alike are getting lighter in tone and color. But have no fear of perishing this week in a sea of boxed wines, Very Expensive American Chardonnay and Redheaded Sluts. The LA Times throws us a life-saving rubber dingy of journalist rigor with a couple of agreeably edifying articles. The first looks at the ramifications of a possible move by federal regulators requiring wine labels to list ingredients. Given the apparent prevalence - or normalcy - of additives which most would probably find off-putting (from a form of collagen obtained from sturgeons' bladders to coloring agents with names like Mega Purple), many industry figures display a sense of unease. Clark Smith, the head of a "wine fix-it shop," provides a provocative quote:

For all of the posturing about terroir, very little wine sells because it is distinctive. Additives are cosmetics. They are supposed to enhance, improve a wine. [Wine enhanced this way is like] a beautiful woman whose makeup is invisible. It's the clumsiness of the winemaker who is using the additives that is the problem.

In the course of researching that controversial wine additives story, Corie Brown seems to have uncovered a surprising tip for salvaging corked wines. The secret? Saran Wrap...

Wine Columns for the Week of March 23, 2007

If there is a wine-producing country on Earth more exciting than Spain, with more palate-thrilling wines at every price point, I have not found it.

Paul Gregutt's bold declaration in this week's Seattle Times strikes a chord with a few of his more eminent colleagues. In the NYT, Eric Asimov lauds Navarre's renaissance, while Tim Teichgraeber - writing from Santiago de Compostela, no less - snags another front page byline in the Chronicle's wine section with a devout tribute to Albariño.

It's worth remarking on recent changes at the Washington Post. In perhaps the most significant addition to a major food section since Harold McGee joined the NYT, the Post has recruited Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg (Becoming a Chef, Culinary Artistry, etc.) for a lively new wine column. With their new book hot off the presses, it's a particularly astute move. (Although I'm not quite sure where this leaves the reliable - perhaps too reliable - Ben Giliberti.)

As a further sign of the resurgence of spirits, the Post has also appointed a biweekly Spirits columnist in Jason Wilson. His article on vermouth is a good start -- and if nothing else, he has catchy headlines.

Wine Columns for the Week of March 14, 2007

From last week's wine columns comes a handy hint from Maximilian Riedel. He recommends drinking Diet Coke from a Pinot Noir glass. Apparently,

it shows less bubbles, and the pinot glass will enhance the aroma, tone down the sweetness and take away the saltiness and bitterness.

Just what taste that actually leaves behind in a glass of Coke is up for debate -- but a hot tip nonetheless from the implausibly suave 11th-generation scion of enological glassware.

There's little else of note other than Eric Asimov picking up where the WSJ left off on wine fraud and Jerry Shriver on wine tourism in New Zealand (technically from the week before last). Displaying just a touch of irreverence (nothing really, compared to Riedel's Coke confession), Wines of the Week are drawn almost exclusively from the Southern Hemisphere, with a sprinkling of Spanish and Greek selections.

Wine Columns for the Week of March 7, 2007

In what must count as one of the oddest career moves ever, Malcolm McLaren, notorious as the Sex Pistols' manager, actually began his working life as a trainee wine taster at George Sandeman. McLaren proves a fine writer too, contributing a gem to yesterday's NYT Magazine in which he paints a portrait of Blueface, his appallingly (and hilariously) misogynistic ex-general wine instructor. It's heady stuff: cheap Bordeaux are women in need of being put in their place, a young Burgundy from Morey-St.-Denis is a virgin ready for ravishing, and a particularly august Hermitage displays a "truly heroic, masculine body."

After such indelicate prose, all the week's other articles seem just a bit dry. There are myriad tributes to the late Gallo patriarch, as well as extensive coverage of New Zealand Pinot Noir in both the Seattle Times and SF Chronicle.

Over at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Gil Kulers argues that Two-Buck Chuck can beat a $175 bottle of Stag's Leap -- given the right company and context. He even displays an admirable magnanimity in admitting to enjoying a bottle of almond-flavored non-vintage sparkling wine.

What would old Blueface make of that?

Wine Columns for the Week of February 28, 2007

The notion of wine as a way of life is neither new nor especially profound, but many of this week's stories take the theme in interesting directions. Tara Q. Thomas details the grueling ordeal three men undergo in order to be named "America's Best Sommelier." Corie Brown, in a LA Times column newly christened "Oeno-file," writes poignantly about the disjunction between the beautiful dream and arduous reality of being a wine importer.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Tim Teichgraeber has an article featuring Philippe Melka as a "mountain man" with a suitably big (and quite adorable) picture of him beside the fetching owner of Marston Family Vineyards. And finally, Paul Gregutt is so dazzled by Rob Griffin's devotion to winemaking for 30 years that he finds himself unreservedly recommending Griffin's entire lineup of wines.