Sometimes, expensive wines are worth the money. We have always said that price alone is no indication of quality and that price and value are different things. We have tasted many wines under $20 that were thoughtful, lovely and true. We have also tried many astonishingly expensive wines that tasted like anvils. Those often came in heavy bottles with elegant labels and higher alcohol than we would like. We thought that, in a way, their high price alone probably gave them cachet with some people.
warren winiarski
November 29, 2024
We almost didn’t write this column. We were approaching a special wedding anniversary -- which ones aren’t special? -- and we thought we’d return to Napa and Sonoma Wine Country to celebrate. We’d simply drive around to see the places that had sowed some of the seeds of who we’ve become, personally and professionally, since our first visit in 1975.
January 29, 2021Winiarski compares his time at Souverain and Robert Mondavi Winery to climbing ever-taller peaks. “They were my guided lesser peaks, and Ivancie was my attempt at a solo.”
March 13, 2020Wine “has the capacity to lift us out of ourselves by its beauty. The appreciation of that beauty elevates our life through wine.” --Warren Winiarski, on OTBN 2020
November 21, 2019Warren Winiarski, whose the 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon bested famous French reds in the 1976 Judgment of Paris, has become the first winemaker to receive the Smithsonian’s James Smithson Bicentennial Medal.
March 15, 2019"We enjoy older wines because we feel that if you pay attention, you’ll notice that they’re more likely to change dramatically in the glass as you drink them." Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher
March 01, 2019"We invented OTBN in 1999 because it seems like everybody has that one bottle of wine that’s too special to open. So we said, fine, on the last Saturday of February, let’s all corkscrew up our courage and do it together." Dorothy J. Gaiter & John Brecher
March 18, 2016What Did The Judgment of Paris Mean to Warren Winiarski? ‘I Had More Responsibility to the Fruit’
