Tasting Note: Dr Konstantin Frank 2006 Rkatsiteli, Finger Lakes

It’s kind of a tribute to the complicated nature of wine distribution in North America that I had to go to California to finally taste a wine from New York’s Finger Lakes, which are only a few hours drive from my home in Quebec.

How did that happen? Well, Lenn Thompson, the great defender of New York wines on the Lenndevours blog, along with his Finger Lakes correspondent Melissa Dobson, had conspired to bring one of New York’s most unique wines to the Wine Bloggers Conference, so that the dozens upon dozens of bloggers present at Santa Rosa’s one and only Flamingo Resort could discover the good stuff that’s produced out East.

It was certainly not the only wine that they had brought out. In fact,

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Matassa meets Montreal and Manhattan

My good friend and winemaker extraordinaire Tom Lubbe is hopping over the Pond, next week, to showcase his wines in Montreal and New York City. I’m an absolute fan of Matassa Wines, a Domaine I had the chance to visit. A great week walking through the (biodynamic) vineyards, tasting the grapes, packing bottles into cases, pallets into trucks, and to stomp those gorgeous grapes with my own bare (clean) feet (see here and here for details of my stay and, more importantly, to learn more about Matassa).

In Montreal, Tom Lubbe will be hosting

Wine gatherings for the rest of us

Just in case, for whatever reason, you can’t make it to Ronda, Andalusia, for the WineCreator extravaganza (see my previous post), here are a couple of places you could head to, over the coming weeks, to discuss wine with professionals and discover what winemakers are up to around the world.

Reading Alder Yarrow’s Vinography blog, I found out that New York City will be host to its very first Wine Expo on March 7 and 8, at the Javitz Convention Center. It’s interesting to think that there wasn’t one, in a city where so many events about wine take place. There’s a number of interesting producers in the list of 170 exhibitors presented on the Wine Expo’s web site, from well-known operations such as Concha y Toro, Banfi, Catena Zapata, Ravenswood, Ridge or Mouton Cadet to smaller producers I had hardly heard about, like Klinker Brick Winery, producer of 110-year-old vine zinfandels, Anne Amie from Oregon’s Willamette Valley. There’s also a Canadian winery I’ve regularly enjoyed over the years, Pelee Island Winery.

Later that month, Montreal will be host to the biennial Salon des vins de Montréal, where some 230 producers will be present, including