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 [...]
ShareI love Italian wine but rarely get to drink it. I think it’s because I’m married to woman with an American palate (the bigger and fruitier the better) and surrounded by friends who, when the wine list comes, go straight to Bordeaux. At home, I have to be persistent (or sneaky) to get a good [...]
Share(For my complete report on South African wines, click here)
Last year’s most exciting trip to wine country, for me, was to South Africa — even over Bordeaux. True, the wines weren’t as monumental, but the scenery, the dark-humored South Africans, and the great prices really changed the way I feel about wine. I have a [...]
ShareA beautiful, vibrant gold color with a tinge of green invites all tasters fed up (drunk up?) with over-oaked, mass-produced California chardonnay. It’s followed by a delicate bouquet of apples, peaches and honeysuckle. Medium-bodied but deep, with a core of fresh, ripe apple and pear flavors — perhaps a little blood orange — perfectly draped [...]
ShareI love it when a winery has a great produce and a great story. Larkmead is a perfect example. Founded in the nineteenth century by the parents of Lilly Coit, the socialite, transvestite, and benefactress behind the famous, undeniably phallic monument to her beloved San Francisco firemen, Larkmead’s 1,000 acres of prime vineyards are perfectly [...]
ShareEven with the Euro strong as it is, one of the wine world’s great values comes from the northern tip of the Burgundy wine region in France, from a little chalk and limestone plateau called Chablis. For the mouthwatering, citrusy, yet rich white that Chablis is, the wine is undervalued because of two reasons, the [...]
ShareBy Heather Findlay
First it was Bond, James Bond, who by ordering a Lillet martini in one of Ian Fleming’s classics helped raise this popular French apèritif’s international profile. Then it was Bruno Borie, the self-described black sheep of a prominent Bordeaux family, who scooped up the Lillet company in the eighties and gave the formerly [...]
ShareJoseph Phelps, that is. A few representatives of the Ladies Tasting Society, drawn by our long-time love of the winery, forked out $150 each for a special dinner paired with Joseph Phelps’s latest vintages. Two of us, having just returned from a week’s family vacation in a spot more known for its surf breaks than [...]
ShareFor our 13-person Thanksgiving feast this year, we enjoyed a variety of wines, from a value-minded treats I scored for $16, to a carefully-aged treasure I pulled from the recesses of my cellar.
But guess what the group fave was? For this most-American of holidays, guests seemed most drawn to the most-American vintage on the [...]
ShareFor most people, Africa summons up images of lions, tigers, and baboons. So in preparation for our trip to South Africa, and in relation to the most famous and dangerous game we’d see on safari, my wife liked to quiz me: “What are the big five?” (The answer is lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and water [...]