Welcome to the Le Tastevin Wine Club

Upcoming Events

Unfortunately, our winetasting scheduled for September 10 has been postponed until this coming spring, due to difficult circumstances among a number of meetings. Therefore, our next meeting is scheduled for October 08, 2025, where Ron will host a tasting of high-end Beaujolais. A Beaujolais tasting back in January 16, 2013 proved that these wines can be longer-lived and amazing. Arnie has graciously allowed the club to meet at his spatious digs for our 2025-2026 season. Remember, do not touch the photography.

Past Tasting

Our summer dinner on July 09, 2025 was a delightful get-together at Eddie V's in Troy. Fine bottles were paired with a multi-course meal. More details will be forthcoming about our dinner.

Dr. Bob presented a nice selection of the clubs 2005 Burgundy wines. This was a historic vintage, when there was a surplus of wunderful grapes and that it simply took a very talented winemaker to make a bad wine (it is possible, though). Indeed, some of the top quality wines could be still somewhat closed. This tasting was the first part of our club's 2005 Burgundies, the next group will be presented in April 2026. Paired with evening's wines were three delicious cheeses - Camenbert, Brie and Emmental - as well as pâte. We are grateful that Lawrence Tech University, in honor of our past member Ken Cook, allowed us to continue meeting place at LTU alumni house until the end of that season.

Club and Website News

• Unfortunately, we have notified that the LTU Alumni House will no longer be available for our meetings. Fortunately, Arnie has permitted our club to meet at his house. It is more than spatious enough, and will allow him to attend as well. Members - please log into your membership page for Arnie's location, or contact either the club President or your webmaster for the address.
• The schedule for the 2025-2026 season has been posted. You will notice that the page has been condensed, with older tastings grouped together in 5'ish year panels.
• Recent Update! The sortable and searchable tables for both wine tastings and cheese pairings have been recently updated, and made more useful when browsing with multiple devices, including smartphones and tablets. With the addition of information provided by Joe's winetasting notes, the list now includes almost every wine tasted since September 1998. As of April 2025, the table now has over 2,000 entries. With so many entries, there are undoubtedly errors and/or omissions, so please bring them to my attention so that corrections can be made.
• Im Memorandum: We are saddened of the news that our dear friend and supporting member Ken Cook has suddenly succumbed to illness. Publically this has been announced by Lawrence Tech, where Ken taught, in a short obituary. We are all profoundly saddened by our friend's passing.
• Current members (those who have paid their dues) have been issued new usernames and passwords. All old usernames and passwords no longer work. Contact the webmaster for more information or if you have problems loging in. Enable your browsers' javascript function for the membership page to properly display.

Other News

• Konstantine Baum video blind tastes four wines and tries to correctly place their Robert Parker ratings
• Recent article in the BBC documents shocking abuse of foreign champagne workers in France.
• Jasper Morris's article (2018) in The World of Fine Wine ponders about what might be considered the Golden Age of Burgundy
• All of Germany's vineyards and sites have now been mapped and is free to view at VDP.Vineyard.Online - tremendous resource!
• Great site on grape varieties from INRAE Centre in Montpellier
• Jancis Robinson's website has a nice elucidation on the history of Zinfandel/Primativo/Crljenak Kaštelanski.
• Helen Czerski writes in the WSJ about molecular and physical properties affecting the ability of a knife - and wire - to effectively, or not, cut cheese. (Thank you Ron for sending me this article!)
• Well written article decribes why the occurence of ice wines in Germany are being seriously impacted by climate change, whereas climate and geography favor Ontario, Canada.
• The excessive heat and fires effecting Australia's spring and early summer - due to the Indian Ocean dipole as well as effects of climate change and landscape alteration - are beginning to hit hard a number of wine producers. Wine Spectator has an article with some more details.
• A number of articles are predicting a rise in wine prices in response to 2017 extreme weather events, particularly in Europe
• Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are investigating the use of grape waste (pomace) extractions for cosmetics, nutrition and food preservation.
• Article on why a bottle of wine costs what is does
• The historic drought affecting the American west, California in particular, is now resulting in wildfires that are threatening many of California's famous wine-producing regions. Recently, the storms barrelling through California may promise relief.
• Peer reviewed article in PNAS on a modeled impact of climate change on ecosystems and wine production: Hannah et al. (2013) write "...on a global scale, the impacts of climate change on viticultural suitability are substantial, leading to possible conservation conflicts in land use and freshwater ecosystems. Area suitable for viticulture decreases 25% to 73% in major wine producing regions by 2050 in the higher RCP [model] 8.5 concentration pathway and 19% to 62% in the lower RCP 4.5. Climate change may cause establishment of vineyards at higher elevations that will increase impacts on upland ecosystems and may lead to conversion of natural vegetation as production shifts to higher latitudes in areas such as western North America." Telling is Figure 1 with the impacts graphically illustrated on maps. Most important has to due with current vs. future land use and ecosystem management. The authors note: "Freshwater habitats may be particularly at risk where climate change undermines growing conditions for already established vineyards." Given the fact that many (if not most) freshwater habitats (springs, stream and rivers, wetlands and lakes) and surrounding supportive watersheds are over-stressed due to changing precipitation patterns and increasing human water diversion, both from surface and groundwater sources, and increasing landscape modification, this may be a increasingly important environmental and political issue that stakeholders and policymakers are probably ill prepared to handle.
• International Variety Catologue (Vitis) is an on-line resource documenting grape genetic resources, facilitating the exchange of material and an information source for breeders, researchers, and wine growers. Want to know the country of origin of a variety pedigree? The ancestral information breeder name and/or location of the breeding institute holding institution? The area planted with the variety in grape growing country? This and more information is included in this site.

Page last edited: September 5, 2025 (EB)

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