Last April Fool's day, I received what seemed to be a nicely written, yet rather surprisingly nifty wine event invite in my inbox asking if I'd like to meet with Laurent Sauvage, winemaker for the leading family of wines from the
Languedoc in the South of
France,
Robert Skalli Wines. We were to meet with Laurent at
CAV, the outstanding wine bar and restaurant along Market in the
Opera District of San Francisco (and part-owned by none other than
Doug Cook (
Twitter), founder of
Able Grape).
The kind folks at Icon Estates have been worried about all of us out here in US wine-drinker land. They realized back in March that tax time is hard on all of us wine grunts, particularly this year when everyone is still reeling from watching their life savings (and future wine purchasing potential) shrivel by -40% and see a world filled with recession and job loss. They realized that everyone's day or night (or both!) can be brightened by wine, however and put together a great list of wines to have while stumbling through filling out your requisite tax forms: Tax Time Wines! Susan and co. at Icon kindly shot out some wine samples for various bloggers to try including the prolific 1WineDude (Twitter, Twitter2), Luscious Lush Thea (Twitter, Twitter2) and yours truly (Twitter), among others.
OK. So...what the heck is all that stuff in the title?? Don't worry...all shall be revealed by me, your wine geeky host! I joined a group of 8 wine enthusiasts at the kind behest of Luscious Lush Thea (Twitter) at Crushpad (Twitter) last Saturday for a custom wine blending session, replete with winemaker Tom Leaf. Following this event we had the latest Twitter Taste Live: Open That Bottle Night.
This is my first
Twitter Taste Live!,
#5 The Bloggers Take Over!
TTL was started by the man behind the online wine savings outfit
Bin Ends Wine,
Craig Drollet (
Twitter). TTL is an exceptionally innovative integration of the new social media and wine tasting, taking wine to an even greater level of consumer-directed interaction.
Known as the "
wild man of the Loire,"
Didier Dagueneau made some of the most unusual and exceptional
Sauvignon Blanc-based wines from his estate in
Saint-Andelain, in the
Dordogne of the
Loire Valley,
France.
Dagueneau passed away after a microlite plane accident at the age of 52.
Always ecentric and in later years, considered more of a hermetic luminary, he consistently produced absolutely stunning wines and he will be sorely missed.
Didier Dagueneau Fumé de Pouilly 2004
Sources:
Walla Walla Wine Woman;
Oliver Sytles, Decanter.com
