by Winepisser | Dec 29, 2020 | Full Article
Obviously — obviously — there won’t be any Winepisser awards for 2020. Sigh. In January, I reviewed one wine, a 2.5 star bottle of junk, and then prepped to review a lot more. By April, I was under national lockdown, and alcohol sales were...
by Winepisser | May 11, 2020 | Full Article
It doesn’t take an aerospace expert to notice the last Winepisser blog post was from February. That post announced, without the usual fanfare, the Winepisser 2019 Best Wine award. Since then, this site has been nearly dead. You can, of course, blame Ol’...
by Winepisser | Feb 25, 2020 | Full Article
The fifth annual Winepisser Best Wine award goes to California’s Klinker Brick Old Vine Zinfandel 2015, a fantastic bottle of crafted from (according to the maker) “16 different vineyard blocks of old vine zinfandel vineyards with an average age of 87...
by Winepisser | Apr 12, 2019 | Full Article
January and February of 2019 were making the year look poorly, with not a single wine earning the five-star Winepisser rating. Thankfully, the first week in March spiced things up a bit as two single-grape reds won back-to-back cincos. First up is the absolutely...
by Winepisser | Dec 28, 2018 | Full Article
The fourth annual Winepisser Best Wine Award goes to the French bottle Pierre Amadieu Gigondas Romane Machotte 2014, a fantastic and nearly oddball red blend from France’s Rhone Valley, in the Gigondas style of majority grenache blending. I’m a huge fan of...
by Winepisser | Dec 28, 2018 | Full Article
I live in Peru and beat up this country’s horrid selection and taste in wine incessantly, and frankly the country has it coming. So when we launched the Winepisser Worst Wine last year, it was no surprise a Peruvian bottle o’ dreck won the award. This...
by Winepisser | Oct 2, 2018 | Full Article
2018 has been a slow year for “cincos,” the five-star rating given to the best wines tasted here at Winepisser. To date, we only have five contenders for 2018 Winepisser Best Wine, and we are already into October. To be honest, this year has proven the...
by Winepisser | Jul 2, 2018 | Full Article
I recently had the opportunity, and free time, to write a new “Battle of the Budget” article (the last one was on German Rieslings) with another matchup, this time Italian Pinot Grigios. Stepping into the ring were four pee-gees, each just about under $12...
by Winepisser | Jul 2, 2018 | Full Article
Finally, another five-star award after a string of near misses. This one goes to the delicious 2014 San Pedro 1865 Single Vineyard Carmenère, from the Maule Valley of Chile. This happens to the birthplace of Darth Maule, the Sith Lord who gave up fighting rebel scum...
by Winepisser | May 9, 2018 | Full Article
We’re into May, and this year is proving to be unusual. So far, only two wines — both reds — have scored a cinco (five star rating), but a startling number have come close with 4 and 4.5 star awards. It seems many are just having a tough time...
by Winepisser | Apr 28, 2018 | Full Article
You have to be really, really oversensitive about alcohol to let it ruin fucking Disney World for you, but that’s exactly what Insider’s “culture reporter” Kim Renfro allowed happen. Renfro, apparently from California, is used to going to that...
by Winepisser | Apr 28, 2018 | Full Article
Totally out of the blue I received an invite for an invent at a local micro-winery in San Juan de Lurigancho, a district outside of Lima Peru. I wasn’t even aware of Bodega y Viñedos Candela, and certainly had never tried any of their wines, but suddenly I was...
by Winepisser | Apr 28, 2018 | Full Article
Faced with a business trip to Texas — shudder — I opted to make the week a bit brighter by stocking up on some German rieslings to test against each other. I intentionally chose three budget reezies, each at $15 or less. These are readily available in the...
by Winepisser | Jan 14, 2018 | Full Article
Recently I reviewed two vastly different wines that suffered from a similarly horrible problem: they tasted like utter garbage, as if someone had bottled the water used to put out a dumpster fire. The first was a Trapiche Varietales Sauvignon Blanc 2011 from...
by Winepisser | Jan 1, 2018 | Full Article
It was slow going last year, with a struggle to find some 5-star winners until mid-year, but 2018 hit the road running. The very first wine tasted nailed a coveted cinco! Meet the Errazuriz Estate Series Carmenère 2013 from Chile, a budget carmy that will absolutely...
by Winepisser | Dec 27, 2017 | Full Article
The third annual Winepisser Best Wine Award goes to Alvear’s Pedro Ximénez de Añada 2014, a fantastic dessert wine that my original review boldly claimed didn’t need dessert because it was the dessert. Let’s get this out of the way first, as I am sure some...
by Winepisser | Dec 22, 2017 | Full Article
For the past two years, Winepisser has reveled in its negative reviews of wines — hell, snark is in our site’s name — but we hadn’t given the really terrible wines their due at the end of the year, during award season. This year we launch a new...
by Winepisser | Dec 13, 2017 | Full Article
We’re heading into the final weeks of 2017, which means an announcement is quickly forthcoming for this years Winepisser Best Wine award. The contenders so far are a wild, rambling mix of whites and reds, dry and sweet, including — for the first time...
by Winepisser | Oct 15, 2017 | Full Article
Meet Hugel Gentil 2015, a Gewurztraminer blend from France’s Alsace region. My very first Winepisser post praised Hugel, a winery I have been familiar with for nearly 15 years, and which will likely be my favorite winery of all time when I shuffle this mortal...
by Winepisser | Oct 8, 2017 | Full Article
I get it. Cork rots. It leaks air. It’s unreliable. It makes no sense from a simple manufacturing standpoint. I mean, I really get it. In my day job, I’m an aerospace quality consultant, having worked with companies such as Lufthansa, Northrup Grumman,...
by Winepisser | Oct 3, 2017 | Full Article
Generally, 2017 started off pretty terribly, with not a single wine winning 5 stars until March, when Joh. Jos. Prüm’s 2012 Graacher Hehimmelreich Spätlese earned a cinco, and even that was easy, since I’m a fan of the German reezies. And then it wasn’t...
by Winepisser | Oct 3, 2017 | Full Article
Red blends are really amazing these days, as winemaking becomes more technologically savvy and producers have better predictive abilities of what may result from a little mixing and matching. This fantastic blend of 54% Malbec, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon and 6% Petite...
by Winepisser | Sep 21, 2017 | Full Article
Normally we hold the word “syrupy” as a pejorative, hinting at cough medicine or sickeningly sugary prison wine. I’m a fan of dessert wine, and at the same time have encountered my fair share of syrupy garbage that is sold as such, so I’m tuned...
by Winepisser | Sep 20, 2017 | Full Article
We placed this into a mano a mano battle versus Argentina’s Zuccardi Q 2012 offering, and it was a close match. Eventually, however, this Protos Ribera del Duero Roble 2015 won out, largely on the basis of is perfect tannin balance and playfully misleading nose....
by Winepisser | Sep 19, 2017 | Full Article
Dr. Loosen won a five-star review for its 2014 Kabinett Riesling last year, and got praise for other selections, including it’s reliably great Blue Slate offering, which I’m drinking as I write this. But this Beerenauslese dessert reez earns the good...
