During our tasting, led by MW Mary Ewing Mulligan, the wine takes on a softer, earthier, tone. mention this because it could make it harder to blind taste Chianti Classico accurately at a blind tasting. Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. It is an earthy wine, with assertive tannins. Chianti Classico. Brunello di Montalchino. MORE >>

Registration is now open for the next session of my six-week wine class at NYU. tasting sized poursCalvin Trillin has a hilarious post on ACI , a measure with false precision akin to the wine score. Here’s a snippet: “Among people who think of themselves as wine connoisseurs there’s a 61 percent ACI.” What is ACI? NYTimes.com ]. MORE >>

Consumers have filed a class-action lawsuit in California against E&J Gallo over the faux pinot, Red Bicyclette. Tags: tasting sized pours SPIT: volume (how vial!). Two companies have developed oxygen-free, trial-sized bottles, 50ml in size (1/15th of a normal bottle). Ziploc, anyone? AP ; Wines & Vines ]. SIPPED: a new look. MORE >>

Jenny & François import these wines for the east coast, and they organized a tasting in a small and very comfortable setting that actually encouraged conversation, instead of merely offering a glass and a spit bucket. And converse we did - I spoke with Emmanuel for about an hour while tasting, and I learned a great deal about his wines. MORE >>

I recently tweeted that I’d be leading a tasting of hipster wines. The tasting on Manhattan’s Upper East Side came and went and I didn’t wear a woolen cap, flannel shirt, or use empty 40-ounce cans of PBR as decanters. But we did taste some fine and fun wines, if quirky and hard to find (though not in Brooklyn). MORE >>