Featured Skurnik Unfiltered
For as long as the human race has been ingenious enough to make beverages out of unlikely plants and strange-smelling ferments, coffee and alcohol have stood as the twin potable pillars of cultured society. Although coffee lives at the center of many a morning ritual, and spirits tend to dwell in the happy hours of … Read More
As happens all too often, the wines of Alberico passed into legend only after their creator, the prince of Venosa, had left this earthly world behind. The prince was an eccentric recluse who had planted Bordeaux varieties on his estate at the gates of Rome in Lazio in the late 1940s. To quote Eric Asimov … Read More
I know, I know…you’re supposed to drink the stuff at the height of its freshness. But remember the days when they used to say that about Muscadet? And then suddenly it became the ne plus ultra of cool to pour ten-year-old Clos des Briords by the glass? We should start by saying that this was not intentional. … Read More
They say necessity is the mother of invention, and this story begins with a hole which needed filling. When Michael & Harmon Skurnik started The Pinot Project in 2009, it was to answer a call from their customers in New York who were looking for great quality Pinot Noir at a reasonable price. Rewind the … Read More
THE 2018 VINTAGE Well, it’s complicated. Let me reassure you, there are plenty of excellent wines and more than a few great ones. They don’t seem destined for long-keeping (by which I mean decades-long) but you’re not laying them away in any case, even though you could and would love the results. In contrast to … Read More
While there is never a wrong time to enjoy gin – that bright, refreshingly piney, clear spirit – we do think that spring and summer are an especially right time to enjoy this long-lived and historically exciting spirit. Rife with stories from the terrible 18th-century gin craze called “the mother’s ruin” and followed by the … Read More
In 1953, James D. Zellerbach returned from his tenure as the Ambassador to Italy under the Truman administration with one goal in mind – to plant Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in California. While abroad, he spent extensive time traveling through Burgundy which ignited his love for their famed grape varieties. He planted three acres each … Read More