by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
We guess that the hardest thing in the world is going into a store and slapping down twenty or thirty dollars for a wine and not even knowing exactly what’s in the bottle. You know it is wine, you may even be familiar with the producer, but exactly what is in the...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Chianti, that low priced Italian red wine that came in basket swathed bottles and was the darting red wine of the youth of the United States in the 1950’s and was promptly forgotten by the 1960’s. A rather ignominious fate for something that was so popular for so many...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Most of the societies on this planet observe the Ten Commandments in some form or other. They have become the almost universal direction of life, are inviolate and written in stone. There are also Ten Commandments of wine written in stone and are considered by some,...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
The news from Australia and its agricultural woes has been presented in detail by our weather reporting media. Although that nation has been hit with a terrible drought, some of the wineries have managed to stay in business by using water that they have found...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Port, is a powerful sweet wine that serves as an after dinner drink or often, as desert itself. It is a wine that approaches the limits of the allowable alcohol level for a beverage that can still be classified as a wine. The higher alcohol level is obtained by...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Humans are a naturally curious breed and are always exploring something, be it outer space or the bottom of the sea. We leave those explorations to the scientists, but what is there left for the everyday, average person to explore? One popular field of exploration is...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
We are often asked, “what is your favorite wine” or “what variety do you like best”? Unfortunately, because we write about so many wines, it is impossible for us to have one favorite. There are however certain producers that we are, shall we say, partial to, one of...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
We find ourselves in a quandary. What can we write about Franciscan Estate wines that will entice a reader to read on? Unfortunately, Franciscan Estate was not founded by the illegitimate third son of impoverished Bulgarian royalty or by an immigrant family who...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Cultivate, that’s a pretty simple name for a wine, but behind that name lays pure dynamite. The dynamite is not only with wines of Cultivate, but it is what they do with the money derived for their sale. Ali and Charles Banks have been producing fine wines for decades...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
We stand self accused of a crime that we loath in others, wine snobbery. In our many years of writing about wine, we have purposely stayed away from locally made wines because we found them to be, almost universally, garbage. Moving to Missouri, we went out of our way...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
For his entire life, wine lover Thomas Jefferson attempted to grow vitis vinifera, the European wine grapes, in the original thirteen states and most specifically, in his home state of Virginia. Jefferson was a famous wine connoisseur in his own right and was consumed...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Conundrum wines; according to the dictionary a conundrum is a riddle in which a fanciful question is answered by a pun, or a paradoxical, insoluble and difficult problem or a dilemma. So why give a wine or as in this case, a wine blend, such an esoteric name as...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Astrolabe; according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary it is a compact instrument used mostly by seafarers to observe and calculate their location by observing the position of celestial bodies before the invention of the sextant. Now that we all know what has an...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
We all make mistakes, but when an entire industry makes one, it’s a whopper. The wine industry made just such a mistake when they missed out on the newest wine craze currently sweeping the country. In the late 1970’s, the world was first introduced to the fruity and...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
It is always a fine day when one is reunited with an old friend and then to discover that the old friend has not changed over the years but has only improved. Of course you realize than the old friend is a wine, but an old friend is still an old friend. In this case,...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
There are only a few wines left in the marketplace that have held their price tag, almost unchanged throughout years; Turning Leaf is one of them. To begin with, Turning Leaf is not a great wine; you do not get a great wine for eight bucks. What you do get with...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Gnarly Head, now, there is an intimidating name for a wine, but it is a name that really fits. Wherever possible, the grapes for Gnarly Head wines come from older vines that have been pruned in such a way so that they form a knotted, mangled top and thus, a gnarly...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
In this day of free cell phone apps, one must be aware of the old and very true adage that “there is no such a thing as a free lunch.” Somebody has to pay for the food in a free lunch and it is usually the consumer although in most cases, unbeknownst to him or her....
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
We all make mistakes, but when an entire industry makes one, it’s a whopper. The wine industry made just such a mistake when they missed out on the newest wine craze currently sweeping the country. In the late 1970’s, the world was first introduced to the fruity and...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Everything today is initials. We no longer refer to companies by name but by their initials, AT&T, NBC, CBS, TWC, TWA and on and on until we finely to get LOL. With that in mind, it was inevitable that a wine company would do the same; and so it has, “J” Wines....
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
With some of today’s wine prices reaching for the stars, it is good to see that there is still an $8 wine that offers some value. Trinity Oaks makes a complete line of the most popular varieties, all of which are definitely worth their price. The question arises, how...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Winston Churchill’s once described Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” a statement that could also be used to describe Italian wines. For years they were a great source of low cost, fairly adequate wine with Chianti being the best known...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Just in the event you haven’t noticed, it’s June, and in spite of all of the storms that have kept us inside for the beginning of the month, there is plenty of sunshine in our future. With June comes the time for marriages, sports events, outdoor parties and gala...
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
Gallo is a name that has become synonymous with wine the world over. With the end of Prohibition on December 5 1933, the Gallo Brothers, Ernest and Julio, went to a library and took out a pamphlet on making wine and from that simple beginning, a dynasty was born....
by Ben Bodenstein | Reviews
There was a time, in the “way back when” that the finest grapes in California came from the Central Coast’s Edna Valley. The time was trhe early 1800’s And its frame continued until 1919 when the Prohibition Law was enacted. This alcohol restrictive law sounded the...
High Vacuum Engineer: Senior Technical Adviser and Feature Writer for Modern Photography Magazine (1967-1973), co-founder of Together Vineyards, an experimental vineyard in South Florida which was the southern most registered vineyard in the Continental United States. Co-Author of several books on Home Wine Making, Home Beer Making and Distillation of Spirits. Co-owner of Camera & Video Repair Institute in Sunrise Florida.