I absolutely love the autumn. It has always been my favorite season. I have always loved the weather, the foods, even going back to school. To me fall has always brought with it a sense of renewal, of a new beginning. Perhaps it's conditioning from school days, but I have always felt that fall is the true beginning of a new year, moreso than January.
While most wineries begin releasing their next vintage in the spring, that process continues right through to the fall. Think about the cycles of agriculture. Wineries need to have their finished wines released and shipped before the intensity of harvesting the new vintage. Wine making is pretty intense stuff and it requires a winerey's total focus. If you want to be ignored on a winery visit, go during harvest.
New York and NJ and Philadelphia are awash in great juice right now. I've been feverishly running from tasting to tasting and organizing tasting meetings in the restaurant for other wines that aren't available to taste otherwise. Corinne, our trusty wine steward is collating the notes from all these tastings so that some time next week we can make our final selections for the wine list 2015. In case you're wondering, I do love my job. I love most aspects of my job and this is a pretty cool one.
By the end of September, Mark and I will have tasted thousands of wines. From those wines, probably a little more than a hundred will wind up on the consider list, with relevant notes. From those compiled notes, we will choose a few dozen to bring in. Some have gotten the golden buzzer treatment and have already arrived in our cellar. Though the season is not over (by the time you get this I will already be at one of the three tastings scheduled for today), I can honestly say that this is a banner year, full of exciting new stuff and great new vintages from some old friends.