This is the time of year that every newspaper and magazine features articles on New Years resolutions. There are always suggestions on losing weight, learning to play the piano and buying a dog. Why should Power Tasting be left out? Resolute as we are, we are looking forward to living up to some our own expectations in 2019.
- Enjoy a part of Wine Country where we have never been before. In recent years we have discovered wines in Sicily, Tuscany and Languedoc. Maybe in this coming year we will be sampling Blaufrankisch, Tempranillo or Jacques Capsouto reds. There are no plans yet, but we are eager to go wine tasting wherever the road takes us. We hope that all our readers are open to the experience of discovery that makes wine tasting such a tantalizing pursuit.
- Visit the new homes of old favorites. There are a few Napa Valley wineries that have built new tasting rooms because of the damage wrought by earthquakes (Trefethen), the terrible fires (Signorello) or just because they wanted a new place to welcome visitors (Joseph Phelps). We haven’t been to see them yet and would really like to do so. And when we do, we’ll report on them in the pages of Power Tasting.
- Go back and try a few places we didn’t like that much in the past. Taking our own advice, we’ll go back, because we may fall in love again. It won’t be just little, out-of-the-way wineries that we hadn’t heard about before (although we’ll try a few of those as well). There are some internationally known wineries that changed hands, usually in corporate takeovers. We haven’t always been happy with the changes they made, but now that they’ve been in place for several years, it’s worth giving them a second chance.
- Find wine tasting adventures close to home. Power Tasting is based in New York City. There have to be some wonderful wine bars that we haven’t tried yet. Actually, there are a lot of wine bars where we haven’t been. Wine tasting is a part of travel but it should also be a part of staying home.
- Do at least one international comparison. We’ll open bottles of wines made from the same grape or grapes from different parts of the world. We’ve done this before, but it’s been a long time. So maybe Syrahs from Australia, the US and France. Or French, American and New Zealander Sauvignon Blancs. It’s a great way to see how different terroirs lead to unique expressions of the same grapes.
- Go to San Francisco. We’ll certainly be in California again this year. After all, we’ve tasted there every year since the 1970’s so why stop now? But in recent years we’ve gone straight from the airport to the vineyards and haven’t passed any time in the City by the Bay. It’s time we went back.
- Eat well when we go wine tasting. We always have. We’re not going to change now.