ShareJust returned from a Valentine’s Day tasting at Viansa in Sonoma, and I’m happy to report that we learned something.
 
We paired three wines with chocolate desserts, including chocolate-covered strawberries, kiwi, and banana, plus biscotti and a couple of wine-flavored chocolate sauces. While we were especially fond of Viansa’s “Prindelo” 2006 (a blend of red Italian [...]

Share 
With the exception of an occasional mimosa — and only when the sparkler destined for adulteration isn’t one of my favorites — I’ve never been much of a wine-cocktail drinker. Oh, and then there’s the sangría we serve every year at our Fourth of July pool party (again, made with zinfandel of a quality that [...]

ShareMy wife likes to tease me by saying that I “woefully under-decant.” I don’t think so. But it is true that I rarely decant. And I admit that a few times I’ve been burned by not decanting — take the example of the Glen Carlou 2005 Grand Classique I wrote about recently. In fact, 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 [...]

ShareJust in time for tax season, here’s a list of my ten favorite wines that cost less than, well, a lot of stuff, including a bouquet of flowers, three trips across the Golden Gate Bridge — even Madonna’s new CD. To make it easier to find the wines, I’ve listed the four reds, one rosé, [...]

ShareDear Wine Girl:
I hosted a holiday dinner party recently and one of my guests brought a very special bottle from his cellar: a 1986 Château Margaux, in fact, which he’d bought upon release way back when. I was so honored — and so flustered — by his generosity that when we decanted the bottle and [...]

ShareFrom the spit-not-swallow department: Some of you may have read the hilarious report in the New York Times yesterday about “wine tasters gone wild” in the Long Island wine region of New York state — complete with stories of limo-loads of bachelorettes dancing on table tops, inebriated haywagon riders running naked through the vines, and [...]

ShareAs Maya put it in Sideways, wine is a living thing. And she’s right: as it arcs through a youth, a middle age, and its golden years, every wine changes. And then, like all living things, it dies. So in the case of a good wine, or more specifically a fine wine that’s meant to [...]

ShareAn important lesson from the age of food-and-wine enlightenment is that when a recipe called for wine, it does not mean the stuff they sell in supermarkets as “cooking wine.” Nor does it mean some half-consumed bottle that’s been in your fridge (or worse in your cabinet over the stove) for a year. Wine [...]

ShareThese are my five keys to loving Italian wine, distilled from my five-class course with Luca of Zigzando wines:
1. Eat, Drink, and be Maria
Italian wines are food wines. They are made to be enjoyed during a meal. That’s why they tend to be light to medium bodied in weight, so their flavors can complement rather [...]