Tasting Notes: This Week in Wine Blogs

Vintage Texas: Ask any wine lover or wine professional and they'll tell you the very same thing: The greatest thing about wine is how it brings folks together.

And that's exactly what happened when former All-American football player and NFL veteran Alphonse Daotson called up Russ Kane, the leading authority on Texas wines today, asking him if he'd like to taste the most recent vintage from his Certenberg Vineyards in the Texas Hill Country.

Since Alphonse and his wife were coming to Houston to visit Alphonse's mother (above, left), Russ brought his mom (above, right) along to the tasting as well.

Folks, that's what wine's all about: Sharing goodness with the people you love.

Click here to read more about the wine and their newfound friendship.

Uncorked Daily: "Can you hear me ripening now?" asks Greg Steiner this week in the blog he authors for The Tasting Room and Max's Wine Dive. In wine parlance, the term varaison, Greg explains, means "the onset of ripening" and can be likened to "puberty, but for fruit... a rite of passage."

When it comes to wine knowledge, Greg is full of it and he continues to churn out educational posts over at Uncorked Daily. Blog on, brother!

29-95: "A visit to Bacchus," the new Montrose wine bar, observes 29-95 blogger Nikki Metzgar, "gives the not-entirely-accurate impression that Greece has an abundance of pumpkin pie and cucumber water. Every Tuesday, a different kind of pie is collected from House of Pies and paired with a wine or beer for $10. One week it might be bumbleberry with Malbec; another might mean pumpkin with Oktoberfest."

Wow, wine and pie? Doesn't sound very Greek to us. But we're thrilled to see that wine culture continues to expand in Houston.

Click here for Nikki's review.

Vinography: And from beyond the borders of the Lone Star State, we learn that wine blogging pioneer Alder Yarrow (right), curator of Vinography, has been asked to author a monthly column for the Jancis Robinson subscription-based website.

The column is called Alder on America and there's a free preview of Alder's first piece here.

European Wine Bloggers Conference: The annual gathering, now in its fourth year, was held last weekend in Brescia (Lombardy), Italy, bringing together "bloggers and wine lovers of all backgrounds from around the world."

The organizers have begun posting videos of some of the sessions, including the keynote address by George Taber, author of Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine, and a panel entitled "Defending Storytelling," featuring wine blogger Evan Dawson, author of Summer in a Glass: The Coming of Age of Winemaking in the Finger Lakes.