The Wellesley Wine Press: 2006 Villa Pillo Toscana Borgoforte Located!

Accolades

I was quoted in The Boston Globe about legislation that would permit winery direct sales to Massachusetts:

“This is good news for Massachusetts wine enthusiasts, who will now be able to purchase wines they currently don’t have access to,” said Robert Dwyer of Wellesley, who blogs about wine. “This is also good news for Massachusetts in general since it will mean new revenues.”

I wrote this article in WellesleyWeston Magazine featuring local food & wine experts like Chef Ming Tsai, Mike O'Connell Jr., Chris Minervino, and Austin Moran. Check it out!

I shared my thoughts on the direct shipment of wine to Massachusetts with CBS Boston during hearings at the State House.

This site was listed as one of the Top 100 Wine Blogs:

https://alawine.com/wine-blog-rankings.html

Our Scoop the Spectator contest was mentioned on Palate Press:

"Bob Dwyer, a Massachusetts-based wine blogger, has created the coolest parlor game in wine, and for once it’s a wine contest that does not involve blind tasting.

I used to think the entire concept of a Top 100 list was silly. This year, mine was the first guess on Dwyer’s site."

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reached out for a quote on the expansion of the number of licenses each retailer in MA can hold:

"Robert P. Dwyer of Wellesley, who blogs about wine at thewww.wellesleywinepress.com, calls the state’s liquor laws bizarre and favors a wider availability of wine. For consumers, it would be more convenient to be able to buy wine at a supermarket while shopping for food, he said."

“You have this strange exclusion of wine, which in Europe is considered a grocery item,” said Mr. Dwyer. “Here it’s considered the demon rum.”

Wine Spectator picked up on our 2011 Scoop the Spectator contest with these remarks:

"trying to predict the annual Wine of the Year is a popular parlor game among enophiles. This year, blogger Wellesley Wine Press held a contest, with New York wine retailer Grapes the Wine Co. awarding a prize of a Kindle Fire e-reader to the first commenter to correctly guess this year's top wine before it was announced. Unfiltered was impressed with the number of Top 10 wines prognosticated by Wellesley's readers. "Senelwine" guessed Château de St.-Cosme Gigondas 2009, our No. 10 wine, "Mike M" guessed Quinta do Vallado Touriga Nacional Douro 2008, our No. 7 wine, "James Z" guessed Baer Ursa Columbia Valley 2008, our No. 6 wine, and "RichardPF" nailed it, winning the Kindle, and the respect of his wine-loving peers. Looks like Wellesley's readers know their wine."

Boston's CBS affiliate WBZ-TV stopped by to discuss why wineries still can't ship wine directly to MA consumers more than a year after courts ruled they should be able to.

WBUR, Boston's NPR news station, did an audio interview with me for a piece discussing MA Question 1: Repealing the Alcohol Sales Tax.

The Chicago Tribune's Bill Daley mentioned the site in Rosé: A wine for more seasons. I said "For me, they're like pumpkin spice coffee drinks: best enjoyed early in the season". Bill alsogave the site a shout-out for a piece the Capitol Case Clubcontributed about restaurant wine service. I thought it was a great example of how print wine writers can effectively engage wine bloggers.

The nice folks at Foodista, The Cooking Encyclopedia Everyone Can Edit, named this site Wine Blog of the Day for this entry featuring GoBYO. Thanks!

Budget Bacchus named this site Wine Blog of the Week. Check 'em out!

Boston University wine educator Stacy Woods mentioned this site alongside wine blogging powerhouses Vinography and Fermentation. Wow- that's great company to be in! Thanks- I appreciate it.

WBZ-TV, the Boston CBS affiliate, interviewed me aboutMassachusetts wine shipping laws. It was kind of surreal having a camera crew in our kitchen but we enjoyed it! Check it out:

Wine Enthusiast Magazine called me a "wine accessory guru". Thanks! I appreciate it.

NPR's Public Radio Kitchen linked to my pieces on "Syrah: The Steroids of the Pinot Noir World" and "Watching the Wine Community Rumble". Thanks for that! I am humbled, and I feel just a little bit like the Car Talk guys do when they say "And even though Roger Clemens stabs his radio with a syringe whenever he hears us say it, this is NPR: National Public Radio."

The Boston Globe's website has been linking to my recent entries as part of their expanded local coverage includingWellesley. I truly appreciate that as it has driven a lot of local traffic to this site.

It was really nice of Thomas Matthews, Executive Editor of Wine Spectator to leave a comment and then check back and answer some questions I had. Awesome guy! Check it out here. And here.

Thanks to The Boston Globe for including The Wellesley Wine Press in their list of local blogs in the Food & Drink section. Check it out here.

The Wellesley Wine Press was just added tohttps://wine.alltop.com. Alltop is an interesting topical take on sorting through the best sites on the Internet- check it out and see which sites are listed for topics you're most interested in.

One of my first posts here on the Wellesley Wine Press featured a 92-point Wine Spectator wine with a release price of just $12: The 2006 Villa Pillo Toscana Borgoforte. 92 points for $12 is a huge Quality-Price-Ratio (QPR) winner; especially for an Italian red.

While visiting some wine shops in the metro Boston area yesterday, I stopped in for a visit to Upper Falls Liquors in Newton. The shop is affiliated with Post Road Liquors in Wayland and Auburndale Wine and Spirits (also in Newton) as I wrote here. Their web site is http://thepostscript.com.

Anyway, their special this month and last is "buy 6 mixed bottles from the US or Italy and get 20% off". Those are pretty broad categories, so as I walked around I had a few California wines in mind but nothing I *had* to get. Then I asked the friendly clerk if he had any Villa Pillo (because looking through the bins of Italian wine is a mind-bender for me since the labels all look so similar after a while.) He said "Yeah sure- we have it up front." I was like "Wow!". They had 3 cases of it at a price of $12.99 per bottle. I bought 6 for a per bottle price of $10.39.

For me, it's this kind of value that makes hunting around for specific wines worth it. $10 is a tough, ultra-competitive price point. There is an ocean of bad wine seeking to make its way into our homes- how else to avoid wasting money on mistakes other than relying on professional critics and trusted local wine shops? Not that I always agree with Wine Spectator ratings, but on average I think they're right more than they're wrong.

I haven't cracked open a bottle of this '06 yet, but I did have the '05 and I gave it 85 points. You can read my Cork.com review here.

Other shops that I've heard have this wine in stock (thanks to you readers out there who dropped me an E-mail when you noticed I was looking for this wine):

Long Island, NY http://popswine.com
Chicago http://samswine.com
Newton, MA http://www.murraysliquors.com
In Western MA http://www.nejaimeswine.com and http://www.spiritshoppe.com

I hope you all have the best Thanksgiving you've ever had this year. Thanks for visiting the Wellesley Wine Press and making it part of your Internet reading!

Update (12/2/2008): I cracked open my first bottle of this wine, and I was impressed. It is a very nice wine and it may be worth the hype. I gave it 90 points- read my Corkd review here.

Further reading:

I explain why this wine is absolutely the best value I've talked about to date in "How to Buy Wine Like Warren Buffett Buys Stocks"

Question of the Day: If you've had this wine- please tell me what you think. I'll crack a bottle open soon and will update this post with my rating. If you haven't tried this wine, what wines are you serving for Thanksgiving?

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2006 Villa Pillo Toscana Borgoforte Located!

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

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