Poor Robert on Wine

Covid-19 and Small Wineries — A Personal Perspective From the Trenches

We live in a very different and crazy, uncertain world right now and for many of us it involved simply going home, working from home and doing the occasional jig-saw puzzle to break up the day.  We watched mainstreet businesses shutter for the first time in our lives and for some of us even saw friends get sick (some really sick) and even die. Our news sources suddenly became Covid-19 updates and…

New Wine for a New Generation of Wine Drinkers Or . . .

For a while now I’ve been thinking about the sheer volume of new wine (different labels) have hit the market in the past several years, why and what it really means.  In an effort to synthesize my thoughts on the subject, I decided to write a blog post which will be a bit of a ramble as it comes together.  By way of disclaimer, this is a very subjective topic and so what follows can only be…

Wine Tasting and Reviews for the Masses

I’ve been drinking wine (good and bad) for over fifty years now and I’ve written  and read more than my share of wine reviews.  Lately I’ve become a bit disenchanted with both the content of the reviews and the process of writing them.  It seems to me that many of the reviews we see today are written to impress the reader with the reviewers knowledge of wine and to help the winemaker/distributor…

Wine, Wine Everywhere, but is it Old Enouth to Drink?

I’ve been AWOL for a while as life has gotten in the way of my blogging, but I am slowly getting back in the swing of things and hope to do a lot more this spring and summer.

This offering will be a bit more editorial than information driven as opposed to my usual  posts.  While I’ve been off the air I have still been drink a fair number of new and different wines and in that process it has…

Rioja Versus Rioja – Will One Tempranillo More?

This is my kind of battle. I enjoyed this post so much and the reviews involved that I am passing it on to my readers to enjoy.

Economic Impact of California Wine Country Wildfires: Preliminary Analysis

I was in the process of writing up something on the impact of the fires in wine country on the wine community and production when Mike posted this. It has better detail than I had so I am just reblogging it for now. I’ll save my post for a time after the dust settles. Enjoy, this is really well done.

The Weekly wine for September 25, 2017 A Very Rare (unobtainable) Wine

It’s been a while since I’ve posted to Poor Robert’s, as they say; Life has sort of gotten in the way.  Well I now have a reason. I just tried a really fun and interesting wine that nobody, not even I can buy.  A friend of mine, an engineer from Chicago vinted it and sent me a bottle to try.  Sorry Jim my expectations were not that high when you told me you were send it to me to sample and rate. …

Weekly Wine for April 29, 2017

Yellowstone Cellars & Winery – 2011 Cabernet Sauvignon

Okay so my wife knows me too well and knows I love the unusual in most things.  For my birthday this year she bought me a couple of bottles of Yellowstone Cellar & Winery2011 Cabernet Sauvignon, after all who would expect to find a fine wine vinted in  Billings Montana.  She hit a homerun!  I really enjoyed this wine on every level and it…

A White Barbera (yes that’s correct)

Jim Olsen, one of my all time favorite winemakers received a $100,000 grant to create a really unique wine of his choosing.  Boy did he ever! He started with the best California grown Barbara grapes  (deep Italian red grapes) raised in the classic Piedmont style. Right after picking he stripped them of their skin and set to work to make a white wine (classic straw color – not a hint of red or…

A Guest Post by Pascal, a Young Frenchman living in South Carolina who loves and lives Wine.

Pascal who grew up with his hands in the soil of Frances great wine regions wrote this as a post to a wine group I frequent and I asked permission to reprint it to my Poor Robert’s.  I am posting it just as he wrote it without corrections or interpretation.  He asked that I fix it because, as he said, he was thinking in French and writing in English.  I have chosen not to honor that request as I…

Brexit Means Brexit (But What Does It Mean for Global Wine Markets?)

Well wine fan’s There is a reason Mike is one of my favorite bloggers, he is thoughtful and his facts are actually facts. This post on the impact of Brexit and it’s impact on the wine world is just wonderful. It has not editorial conclusion that you can take to the bank, but it gives us a lot of information to think about and prepare ourselves to watch the Brexit process unfold. Enjoy.

The Holidays and Wine (not so much)

The holiday season regardless of your religious (or not) persuasions supposed to be about peace, love and joy.  Since the beginning of recorded history we read and hear about wine being an integral part of the season.  After all at its most primal level this time of year is a celebration of the Winter Solstice and early records indicate the use of fermented beverages as part of the celebrations.…

Ian is one of my favorite wine writers and this post to the Bristol Wine Blog was very enlightening. So much so that I went straight to the local Wine shop and looked for the three varieties of Valpolicella, on the top two shelves and sure enough they were all to be found. In my youth I Valpolicella was one of my favorites, but over the years I’ve been more focused on other varietals. So now with…

Everything you always wanted to know about Chianti Classico (and lots more!)

Well loyal PRWA readers, once again I am poaching (re-posting) a piece from Mike Veseth’s Wine Economist. Mike has done it again with this great synopsis, book review, of Chianti Classico. I am a broad reader of all books wine, but I never miss one that Mike Veseth reads and reviews. I am off to see if I can get it for my Kindle or whether I’ll actually have to go to B&N to pick it up. I am not a…

What Old Wino’s Do In Retirement

When I made the decision to retire it wasn’t easy.  After all I’d been doing lawyers stuff for forty-three years and as you can imagine, it pretty much defined me professionally.  What would I do with all my time? Would Bonnie and I have enough to live on?  Could I stay active  mentally and physically? Lastly what would it be like not getting on an Airplane and flying off to lord knows where to…