ShareWhy, oh, why didn’t I buy two bottles? I took a 2003 Sesti Brunello di Montalcino for a test run (in preparation for our all-sangiovese tasting tonight at the Ladies Tasting Society), loved every drop, and then didn’t have enough time to zip back to Berkeley to get another. If I had one to bring [...]

ShareOur latest assignment at the Ladies Tasting Society is to blind-taste a selection of wines from Italy that are pure sangiovese — that is, 100 percent, virgin sangiovese, the native (and woefully underappreciated) grape variety of Tuscany. It’s as if sangiovese were the first love and first wife of Tuscan winemakers, to whom she bore [...]

ShareHere’s a Greek wine that makes me want to hold my glass out for more, rather than throw it in the fire: Manousakis Nostos 2003, a red blend from a mountainside vineyard on Crete, rocked a recent dinner we enjoyed at the San Francisco Hellenic institution Kokkari Estiatorio.
For the story behind our encounter with this [...]

ShareI just got back from vacation on the Riviera Maya in Mexico and although it’s pretty hard to find fault with 10 days of snorkeling, sunbathing, and shooting tequila, I did miss drinking good wine. When we were on Isla Mujeres and our only source was the local Supermini (now there’s an oxymoron for you), [...]

ShareI ordered this fine, underrated wine to go with steak tartare at the upscale bistro-style Resto in San Francisco. Its enticing aromas of ripe plum fruit and loamy earthiness got everyone excited, but the real treat lay in the mouth: huge, focused flavors of plum, licorice, and black cherry fruit belied its medium-bodied weight and [...]

ShareIt was a perfect choice for a chilly January evening and a plateful of handmade hamburgers: zinfandel. Rich, round, and spicy, this varietal remains so popular because of its easy-to-drink, belly-warming, affordable profile. It’s not a wine to get too serious about; in fact, our least favorite zinfandel in a recent blind tasting held by [...]

ShareThe Ladies Tasting Society met the other night to do a blind tasting of zinfandel wines and it was the most fun we’d had since that poolside rosé taste-off in Palm Springs. Not just because of the sage and jalapeño burgers that paired so perfectly with the wines. Not just because of the debate that [...]

ShareThere’s a cloak of mystery still surrounding wines from South Africa. Because the wine industry there is so young, most wine drinkers in the U.S. will draw a blank when asked about South African wine. In fact, when my tasting group, The Ladies Tasting Society, sat down last week to taste its way through eight [...]

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 [...]