Taking the Long Road with Jamie Kutch of Kutch Wines
Jamie Kutch has become one of the most respected producers of California Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. For a former Wall Street trader, it’s been an unconventional journey.
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Jamie Kutch has become one of the most respected producers of California Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. For a former Wall Street trader, it’s been an unconventional journey.
We asked NVWA student Josh Jacobsen about getting his wine education while pursuing the dream of opening Rae Vino, an online wine shop.
Explanations from our favorite wine fault articles on the web, along with a “How Scary?” description, which aims to break down each “fault” in layman’s terms.
For the most part, oak-aged red and white wine is still misunderstood among most consumers. We asked seven winemakers to explain what oak actually imparts to a wine.
Those European wines that you need for blind tasting practice might be about to rise in price, because of a dispute over subsidies in the aerospace industry.
Austria’s famous cultural fastidiousness has been particularly acute when it comes to Sekt, the country’s sparkling wine. While Sekt has been produced since the 1840s, the market is just now seeing the results of Austria’s new sparkling wine designation, under the moniker Österreichischer Sekt mit geschützter Ursprungsbezeichnung (g.U.), which stands for “Austrian Sekt with Protected Designation of Origin” (PDO).
In a special Op-Ed authored for Seven Fifty Daily, Dan Petroski, winemaker for Larkmead Vineyards and Massican Winery, offered a stark view of how climate change will impact Napa Valley in the coming years. The piece inspired a lot of questions for us. We reached out to Petroski for comment on some of the matters we feel are most important for students of wine.
The standards for fine wine service are a vital part of any sommelier organization’s curriculum including the Court of Master Sommeliers. These standards were derived from traditional, formal European wine service used at the very top restaurants around the globe. The standards have existed in some form or another for decades. While a majority of the standards only apply to the very finest restaurants, there are a handful of common denominators that apply to wine service in any restaurant regardless of style or level of service.
Recently, I was sharing dinner with a good friend and fellow Master Sommelier at a bistro in the nation’s heartland. We ordered a bottle of Blanc de Blancs Champagne from an excellent grower-producer. What followed, in terms of our server opening the bottle, was somewhere between comedy and tragedy. While telling us about the evening’s specials, our server blissfully destroyed the capsule on the bottle, took the cage off, and waved the bottle around as if it were a half-gallon of milk. In short, everything that could have been done wrong to open the bottle—was done wrong.
There’s really only one way to do Champagne service correctly, and safety is the most important aspect…