ShareAs the financial crisis worsens, I have to say I’m glad I’m a wine drinker. Regardless of how painful the downward stabs of the Dow charts feel, I can always get pleasure from a glass of wine. And no matter how complicated the subprime meltdown may seem, the job of sharing a bottle of bubbly [...]
ShareMalbec, the signature varietal of Argentina, isn’t a red wine that most people reach for as a rule. Its South American provenance has only been on fine wine drinkers’ radar for a couple of decades, and the vine itself — with its sensitivity to frost and disease, plus its tendency to make ham-handed, tannic wines [...]
ShareThere are a number of wine tasting party kits on the market, all of them having the advantage that a wine tasting event, no matter how poorly organized or equipped, is kind of hard to torpedo. A pretty table, delicious snacks, good friends, ten bottles of wine … what possibly could sink this ship? So [...]
ShareEveryone, not just wine lovers, should see Bottle Shock for the same reason that everyone, not just Republicans, should have listened to John McCain’s acceptance speech last night. That’s because the film lit a similarly patriotic flame in my heart (me, a shameless liberal elite whose New Year’s resolution was to buy more French wine [...]
ShareRiesling, the rich white native to Germany, is one of the most underappreciated wines of all time. There are two reasons for this: the common (and mistaken) impression that all riesling is sweet, and the indecipherable labeling on most Old World examples. Lucky for white wine lovers, a superhero has stepped forward to save this [...]
ShareI gained a friend at a party last weekend thanks to an embarrassingly nerdy discussion we had about, of all things, storage. (I promise I am not usually such a dweeb at parties, but I was standing around with a handful of Internet and high tech types.) My new friend was delving deep into the [...]
ShareI have a suggestion for novices who find themselves in possession of the wine list at a restaurant but at a loss for what to do with it. Before I break it down for you, though, I have three caveats.
First, my trick will only work at a certain kind of restaurant, that is, where somebody [...]
ShareIn a landscape of rolling, oak-dotted hills and vineyards producing loads of forgettable wine, one Sierra Foothills winery is determined to make its mark. It’s called Cedarville Vineyard and it’s run by “tech refugees” and UC Davis oenology graduates Jonathan Lachs and Susan Marks. (That’s me with Jonathan at their tasting room.) Cedarville’s acreage is [...]
ShareNormally the words “emerging wine region” should merit a wine lover’s attention. With demand (and prices) rising for well-known labels, emerging wine regions are often the source of easy-to-find, easy-on-your-wallet palate pleasers. Such is the case, for example, with South Africa or Languedoc-Roussillon in the south of France.
Unfortunately, the term can also refer to an [...]
ShareWhat if I told you that the best wine list I ever saw didn’t really exist?
No, it wasn’t in cyberspace or science fiction. It was at Fine’s Cellar, a smart restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona I visited not long after it opened last winter. Partly because the paint was just dry, but mostly because the owner [...]