Wine and Cellar Door Reviews
Tasting Truths
Tasting Truths is the home for straightforward wine notes, bottle context, and myth-busting guidance written for real people, not tasting-room theater. The goal is simple: help you understand what is in the glass, why it tastes that way, when it is worth buying, and how to talk about it without performing expertise.
Here you will find practical answers to the questions wine drinkers actually ask: whether a bottle is worth the price, how a grape or region usually behaves, what food belongs beside it, and which details on a label matter. Some entries focus on individual wines and winery visits; others explain the patterns behind acidity, tannin, oak, age, sweetness, and balance. Taken together, they create a field guide for more confident tasting.
This hub also connects Anchored Vines education, consulting, travel, and pairing tools. If you are planning a tasting, building a cellar, choosing wine for dinner, or trying to separate useful advice from wine folklore, start here and follow the questions that match the bottle in front of you.
Tasting Red Mountain With Marv Crum: A Washington Winemaker Who Delivers Substance, Not Spectacle
“Do you want sizzle or steak?” Marv Crum asked me when we sat down to taste his reds from the aptly named Red Mountain AVA. A rhetorical question for any wine enthusiast, but for those unfamiliar with the phrase, it essentially means, do you want a high-quality product or simply the “idea” of one, and I am here to tell you, Marv is making the real deal.
Southern France meets South Seattle
Nestled in the southernmost area of Seattle is a lovely getaway where patrons can walk out of cloudy Washington and step onto the shores of Southern France and the Mediterranean. This magical place is “Princess and Bear Wines”, a wine bar that imports wines solely from the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France, and offers over 150 different labels, spread across 40 L-R domains, making it the only wine bar of its kind in the United States!
Wine Spotlight: Eva Pemper 2021 Sauvignon Blanc
Never has a “flightless bird” soared so high above the competition. This was the first thing I felt when tasting Eva Pemper’s 2021 Sauvignon Blanc out of Marlborough, New Zealand. While famous for their flightless bird, the Kiwi, this winemaker from down under is clearly on her way to the top of the market.
