ShareDear Wine Girl:
I’m going to Bandol, France in July and looking for tips on visiting the friendlier wineries. Also, do all of them offer tastings and is it a walk-up-and-pay setup?
Thank you,
Bound for Bandol
Dear Bound:
Wine tasting in the south of France is one of my favorite life memories. In 2002, we spent three days tasting [...]
ShareOops, I meant The Wine Spectator, the magazine that one of my favorite retailers likes to make fun of by mocking its cultural imperialism over the wine world. In any case, some of you may have heard of the war of words between the folks at the venerable Napa winery Beaulieu Vineyard and The Wine [...]
ShareSetting: Stylish steakhouse in Napa, California.
Occasion: Valentine’s Day
Food: 16-ounce bone-in rib eye, medium
Wine: Shoulda, coulda woulda decanted, since this big young red is brand-spanking new. But we couldn’t wait, and the forward-thinking winemakers behind this wine have made it in a modern style, so we have no trouble guzzling it with our huge hunks of [...]
ShareOne of the most contentious and (to many wine lovers) depressing things about wine is how much restaurants mark it up. On the average, restaurants will inflate the retail price of a bottle of wine by 100 percent — to cover, they insist, the cost of acquiring, storing, serving, and absorbing the expense of the [...]
Share“Qué guay. ¡Este vino me encanta!”
(Cool. I adore this wine!)
These are words I don’t hear often in Spain — coming from a native and directed at me. Usually it’s me on my knees, thanking a local for a super tip on a wine list, or for an insider connection to a friend and winemaker in [...]
ShareBecause it’s one of San Francisco’s greatest restaurants with a wine list full of trophies, we made reservations at Michael Mina to celebrate a big promotion. Five hours and more than four bottles of fine wine later, the four of us were feeling fully lubricated and nearly insolvent.
My notes for your vicarious pleasure:
ShareLast Monday’s Italian Wine Class got a little mental over Terra Rosa’s Brunello di Montalcino. Especially after our teacher Luca told us he seven bottles left of this wine, only 135-cases of which were produced, ten hands went up, chairs nearly tipping backward: “Can I have one?” Then, when one classmate slipped out the door [...]
ShareDear Wine Girl:
What’s a Super Tuscan? How would I spot it at a wine store or on a wine list? And if I’m in a restaurant with a lot of Italian offerings I’m not familiar with, would I be safe to just go with a Super Tuscan?
–Super Italo-Curious
Dear SIC:
Fast and loose answer: a high-quality red [...]
ShareFor a while now, it’s not been safe to dip your toes in the lake of wine coming from Robert Mondavi Inc., as any of you who’ve had the disappointment of tasting its declining quality during the late nineties and early 2000s can attest. I’ll never forget Robert Parker’s review of Mondavi’s 1997 line-up, from [...]
ShareIt wasn’t just Sideways that gave merlot an image problem. Used as a supporting grape variety in most of the most famous Bordeaux blends, merlot has a long history playing second fiddle to cabernet sauvignon. Then, domestically, it was the go-to red at fern bars throughout the seventies, in part because merlot can yield a [...]