Monte Belmonte Wines
Monte Belmonte Wines: Not quite wine country: Tasting notes from a trip to Córdoba, Spain
By Monte Belmonte For the Valley Advocate As a self-proclaimed wine snob, I admit that it is shameful that I have never been to any “wine country,” in any country, anywhere. Since grapes can grow in virtually every country, meaning wine could be made in virtually...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Shelburne Falls is western Mass wine country
By Monte Belmonte For the Valley Advocate The Bridge of Flowers may be closed to tourists this year but I can think of another great reason to visit Shelburne Falls — bowling! But this is a wine column. So, I’ll start again. The Bridge of Flowers may be closed to...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Aging wine is a lost art, even with us wine snobs
By Monte Belmonte For the Valley Advocate Aging wine is a lost art. It’s lost on me and I’m a self-described wine snob. I have exactly two bottles of wine in my “wine cellar.” It’s actually not a cellar at all. It’s a room off of my living room where I keep my tools...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Vivacious effervescence: Champagne in essence
By MONTE BELMONTE For the Advocate Dom Pérignon, the Benedictine monk, did not invent Champagne. But if you’ve seen his commercials with Lady Gaga, he will be happy to charge you $250 or more a bottle for it. Champagne is, first, a place. A place which our monk...
Monte Belmonte Wines: A toast to 50 years of the Valley Advocate
By MONTE BELMONTE For the Advocate The 50 year anniversary edition of the Valley Advocate? Wow. I’m honored to be in it! My first recollection of picking up the Advocate was back in 2002, when this future wine columnist was only three years into his (legal) drinking...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Wine, fancy snacks and John Williams: Where to find the best picnic provisions for Tanglewood
By MONTE BELMONTE For the Advocate As someone who worked for a music radio station in western Mass for twenty years, I was ashamed to admit that I had never been to Tanglewood. And as someone who is a day-drinking, BYOB loving, wine-snobby bon vivant, I am even more...Monte Belmonte Wines: Best wine-related accounts on social media
By MONTE BELMONTE For the Advocate I suppose it is possible that you are turning the pages of this paper and reading this wine column at the same time you are drinking wine. But that seems highly unlikely (perhaps only slightly more unlikely than you turning pages and...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The New Gig
Perhaps it’s an exaggeration to call it a genius move. But about 15 years ago I institutionalized a weekly wine tasting into my job as a radio host. Every Thursday afternoon at 12:30, I would descend the stairs into the basement of State Street Fruit Store, Deli Wines...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Shelf Talkers
Don’t believe everything you read. As a matter of fact, stop reading this right now or you could be subject to the persuasion of the published word. However, if you find comfort or guidance from others’ opinions, especially when it comes to wine, read on. When you...
Monte Belmonte Wines: In pleasure or pain — champagne
Earlier this month, I quit my job — a job that I still very much loved — in an effort to bring myself into a better work/life balance. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. When I walked out of the office for the last time, I went home and opened a...
Monte Belmonte Wines: A deep drink of Question 3
While getting out my glasses (wine glasses, not reading glasses) and preparing to write this column, I had a new email message from the mailing list of Four Seasons Wine & Liquors in Hadley. While most of their subject lines read “For The Woman You Love: Wine...
Monte Belmonte wines: Three wines sure to cure a white wine funk
When I go to Pita Pockets in Northampton I always get the shawarma pocket, hot. When I go to Mesa Verde in Greenfield, I always get the blackened chicken burrito with chipotle sour cream. When I go to Captain Jack’s in Easthampton, I always get “Just Clams.” I am a...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The wine world is your oyster
Why, then, the world’s mine oyster, Which I, with sword, will open. — William Shakespeare from The Merry Wives of Windsor Scott Soares’s world is an oyster. Well, his world when he is not being appointed by Presidents Obama and Biden to be USDA...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Chardo-haters Gonna Hate
I was in a certain local fine wine store, eavesdropping on a person who was picking out wines for a home wine tasting. I happened to be standing in front of a selection of Chablis, when I heard them say, “We need some white wines. Anything but Chardonnay!” I blushed...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Something wicked this way comes
The witches in “The Scottish Play” warned of a monster of their own making. But this witch may become the best damned spot to go out. Something wicked AWESOME this way comes! Chef Michaelangelo Wescott is opening a new restaurant on Main Street in Northampton, in the...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The end of sparkling isolation?
I’m pretty sure it was the author/physician/scientist Vikram Paralkar who said it first, but it became a popular meme in the early days of the pandemic: “It’s only Quarantine if it’s in the Quarantine province of France. Otherwise, it’s sparkling isolation.” In March...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The wines that have gotten us this far
Almost from day one of the pandemic lockdown, Sharon Swihart has been living with the irony — and a little bit of guilt — that, as a wine manager, she is an “essential worker.” “My life has not changed at all in the pandemic’s wake,” says Swihart, the wine buyer at...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Uncorked on Netflix
“You like hip-hop? First you got Chardonnay…it’s like the granddaddy of wine. It’s versatile, smooth…it’s like the Jay-Z of wine. This is how Elijah, played by Mamudou Athie, describes wine in the new Netflix movie Uncorked. It follows Elijah on his...
Monte Belmonte Wines: #Pantsdrunk or “I could drink a case or two”
You may have recently seen the New York Times story about the anglicized version of the Finnish word kalsarikannit. The translation, and the trending hashtag that goes with it, is #pantsdrunk. It’s part of the Finnish of knowing you’re going nowhere, taking your...
Monte Belmonte Wines: How to open a bottle of wine with a shoe
With the threat of coronavirus, the increasing potential that we will have at least four more years of a demagogue in the highest office, and Tom Brady considering leaving the Patriots, we are living in the End Times. You need to get yourself prepared. “Preppers”...
Monte Belmonte Wines: (Gently) trashing California wine
In my last column, I mentioned how my main motivations for writing this column are to justify my habit and to get free wine, and how I’ve succeeded on both counts. I also wrote about some rather good wines that just miraculously showed up on my doorstep, as if...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Trump’s Next Assassination may be the European Wine Market
I wake up very early every morning and one of the first things I do is check my phone for New York Times push notifications to make sure Donald Trump hasn’t destroyed the world. As of my writing this, he hasn’t. But not for lack of trying. I got a push notification...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Michael Quinlan — One Region at a Time
Northampton’s soon-to-be-sworn in Ward 1 Councilor also happens to be one of the biggest players in wine in Massachusetts, and I meet with him for lunch over wine at Northampton’s Filo’s Greek Taverna. It’s BYOB. He doesn’t let me pay. Ethics-schmethics. Michael...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Sparkling wines for New Year’s Eve … and normal drinking days in 2020
We are entering into the year 2020. That year sounds fake. Like a future I never imagined myself seeing. Where is my jetpack? Where is my visiphone? Oh, I have that? Nice! 2020 is, of course, an election year. If you are anything like me, you will be doing a lot of...
Monte Belmonte Wines: My Christmas Wine Wish List For Santa
Dear Santa, It has been one year since my last confession. I have been a fair to moderately good boy. There has only been the occasional quid pro quo. And even when wine companies have shipped me free wine, I have been unafraid to damn them with faint praise in this...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Trying to Love Italian Wine
At age 2, my grandfather emigrated from Bonito, Italy, on the good ship Colombo and docked in Ellis Island in 1922. He became a U.S. citizen the old fashioned way — by waiting in a relatively short line, getting deloused and having his name changed from Crescenzo to...
Monte Belmonte Wines: West Franklin County, Our Own Local Bordeaux for Cider
I don’t know much about the real Johnny Appleseed but his mythology precedes him. I know he was born in Leominster, Mass., near the time of the American Revolution. And I know he was less interested in planting Macintosh to give to teachers as gifts as he was in...
Monte Belmonte Wines: A Man with La Misión
Cristián Aliaga thought he wanted to be a dentist. Maybe it was the future prospect of uncovering leftover tuna fish under someone’s dental bridge that made him reconsider. But when it came time to make a decision as to what to study at university in Chile, he...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Elsa Petit, the Bordeaux-born prof teaching vine science at UMass
I have never been to wine country. At least never to any of the famous wine countries. Not Napa. Not Bordeaux. Not Piedmont. Nowhere. This is yet another one of the many reasons why it could be considered a lapse in judgment every time the Advocate prints one of my...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Remembering wine minutiae
“Write drunk, edit sober,” said someone who is not Ernest Hemingway, although the quote is often attributed to him. It’s bad writing advice. Worse advice is “write drunk, edit drunk.” And I wish I could blame my own editing mistake in my last column on either of those...
Monte Belmonte Wines: New Hampshire’s tax-free liquor lie
It’s getting to be the end of summer. I admit, while I’m trying to drink dry the last vestiges of the season, coming up with an idea for a late summer wine column has been like drawing wine from a stone. I should be drinking wine on vacation, not worrying about...
Monte Belmonte Wines: A Case for a Mixed Case
It was a dark and stormy night. Meaning a night where I could use a rum and ginger beer over ice with a slice of lime. But also, there was a thunderstorm looming. My children had taken over the inside and outside of my house in order to transform it into an immersive...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The Wines Traveling Musicians Want For Free
My day job, or rather my MORNING job, is to wake up frightfully early and spend time inside a little box in certain Valley people’s kitchens or cars. I am the morning host at 93.9 The River/WRSI. Back in 1986, WRSI celebrated its fifth birthday party with music from...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The Western Mass Wine World’s Involvement in the Pan Mass Challenge
Champagne has long been a celebratory beverage hoisted during the world’s most famous bicycling event — The Tour de France. It makes sense. France is where Champagne comes from. But closer to home, our Western Mass wine world is also strangely connected to the world...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The All-Women Wine List at the Lake House
Her shirt read “Thunder Cunt” as she sallied up to her bar at The Ashfield Lake House. She had the shirt printed because she says it is her “lifestyle brand.” Dre Rawlings is a nasty woman, in the best most badass way. In the way that would piss off the Commander-in...
Monte Belmonte Wines: A ‘Shot Through the Heart’ of Bon Jovi’s Wine Venture
It’s all the same. Only the names have changed. Everyday, it seems we’re drinking rosé. Sometimes you tell the day by the bottle that you drink. And times when you’re all alone, all you do is think. About rosé. Also, it’s not all the same. New Jersey’s second most...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Belly laughs from Wine Country on Netflix, but no wine info
“This one’s good, what’s it called again?” “White wine.” “Freakin’ LOVE it.” Netflix and chill? Great. Netflix and wine and chill? Even better. Wine Country on Netflix and wine and chill? It makes for a nice evening. You may get a good laugh watching Wine Country, but...
Monte Belmonte Wines: That Time I Almost Got a Fancy Wine Word into Merriam-Webster
“This is super important, Monte. You can do something. Having this knowledge that you do. Knowing both the word and knowing what you know about wine. You can do something to help this word along.” So was the charge of The Word Nerd, Emily Brewster, my resident...
Monte Belmonte Wines: My Wine Mother – A Tribute
Everything I know about wine I learned from my mother. Not my biological mother. Her relationship to wine consists of one wine cooler a year and White Zinfandel at family gatherings. Everything I know about wine I learned from my Wine Mother. And as we approach...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Blue is NOT the New Pink
Amy McMahan, co-owner of Mesa Verde in Greenfield, is one of the most intellectually curious people I know. And her curiosity guides her passion for wine. The last time I wrote about Mesa Amy in this column, it was when she showed up to my house with four bottles of...
Monte Belmonte Wines: No snobbism, stupid questions, or incorrect adjectives at Shelburne Falls Cork
“I think we’ve kind of created, like, a black barbershop type of community.” A black barbershop may not be one’s first impression when walking into the new wine shop, Shelburne Falls Cork, but that’s how renowned local chef and newly pinned sommelier, Michaelangelo...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Wine with The Brothers Narkewicz
MNARK: I’m so proud of him. I actually have his bumper sticker on my car in San Francisco, which was interesting because we just had an election for mayor. DNARK: Did I get any votes? Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz may have made headlines when he was the first...
Monte Belmonte Wines: #winehero
In my last column, I gave you a brief how-to in regards to opening a bottle of wine. It’s a seemingly easy enterprise that is terrifying for far too many people. For some reason, wine and all that surrounds wine is just like that. Complicated. Confusing....
Monte Belmonte Wines: How NOT to Open Wine Like an Ah-So
“How do I use this wine opening contraption?” “What if I get cork in the wine?” “What if the cork breaks in half?” “Why didn’t I just buy the one with the screw-cap?” “Can you please open this for me?” Being the closest thing my family has to a “wine expert,” it...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The Wine Nativity
According to the Gospel of John, Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine. A miracle he performed at the request of his mother. His mother who, as the story goes, was subjected to the shame and embarrassment of being Jane The Virgin-ed at the hands (or perhaps...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Happy Chardonnays
When I started pursuing wine snobbery, I would’ve identified myself as a “red wine drinker.” Now that I have academically pursued alcoholism for the better part of a decade, one should expect some hard-core side-eye from me if you deign to say something as audacious...
Monte Belmonte Wines: “Hard” cider is basically apple wine
From a fermentation perspective, your traditional “hard” cider is basically apple wine. It certainly isn’t beer. No hops. No malts. Just apple juice and the magical yeast that turns sugar into alcohol. So, I hope you’ll indulge me in this, a wine column, as I write...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Glendale Ridge Vineyard
The sound was terrifying. It was like nothing I’ve ever heard in the Valley. Was it the high-pitched, piercing shriek of a machine, desperately in need of lubrication? No. It was birds. Thousands of birds. A scene and a sound straight out of the Hitchcock movie....
Monte Belmonte Wines: Wineing at Gypsy Apple
“It’s a white boys’ game, dude. When I first went to take the somm exam, I had this idea that there is going to be one other black person there and it’s going to be a woman. And there’ll be, like, two Indian guys and everyone else will be white. There was actually one...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Vino Volo – A Wine Flight Guide
Airports are not known for elegance. They exist in a particular hell, somewhere between a hospital and the Registry of Motor vehicles. Bad food, bad lighting, an unwelcome groping from a TSA agent: all to ready ourselves as we prepare to experience the miracle of...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Day Drinking – Solving The Problems of the World
Some of the greatest ideas in human history were concocted while cocked. Allegedly, Grant won the Civil War while entirely inebriated. Kruschev avoided war while gently jingled. And Iron Butterfly wrote their biggest hit, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, while thoroughly...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Your Election 2018 Wine Ballot
The morning after the 2016 election, I was grateful that one of the disc jockeys at the radio station where I work kept a bottle of Jägermeister stashed in our freezer. And while these 2018 midterms are not necessarily driving me to drink, things are pretty wild here...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Bonjour, Monsieur Touton
I ain’t gonna lie. I got into this wine writing racket for three reasons: 1) as an attempt to write off all of my alcoholic beverage purchases, which I will list as “considerable,” 2) to see my name in print, and 3) in the hopes that I would receive free wine on a...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The Rosé List at The Ashfield Lake House
As an aspiring wine snob, ordering a glass of wine at a restaurant can be a risky business. Your abysmal choices may range from overly-oaked Chardonnays to mega-purple, mass produced, fruit bombs to the dreaded Pinot Grigio poured from bottles that have been open two...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The brilliant 23 year old ordering bottles for ConVino
“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you remind me of Rachel Maddow.” That was my reaction after meeting Franchesca Thepenier, the 23 year old certified Sommelier and beverage director for ConVino Wine Bar in Northampton. I worked with Rachel for two years...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The potential of Massachusetts wine
Massachusetts is no Bordeaux. It’s no Napa. Perhaps with global warming, someday it will rival the great wine regions of the world, which is why I keep a tire fire burning in my backyard at all times. But given the limitations of our climate, are our burgeoning...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Is the wine world ready for wine in a can?
I am a proponent of Massachusetts becoming an open carry state. Not with guns. But with alcoholic beverages. Unless you happen to find yourself on the Buckland side of Shelburne Falls, where you are permitted to carry an open container of alcohol on the street, you...
Monte Belmonte Wines: The man who made post-Prohibition America love wine, through the eyes of his daughter
How would you like to buy a bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild for $1.75? Maybe a bottle of Château Haut-Brion for $1.95? Interested in two bottles of Château Mouton-Rothschild for a whopping $2.95 each? Or go ahead and splurge on a case of Château Margaux for $25....
Monte Belmonte Wines: The wines of Silicon Valley
“Our neighbor in France had a trained donkey and a goat. We noticed the donkey and goat were always together during the evenings. During the day the goat was around but the donkey was gone. He had trained his donkey to do weed control in the vineyard. The donkey was...E-Edition
Best Of 2024
Readers Choice 2024
