Share Your Favorite Wines During the Holidays
While I love pairing wine with food, the holiday season can easily become a nightmare; Thanksgiving feasts are full of conflicting flavors and Christmas dinner is often a showcase event that demands...
View ArticleJames MacPhail Interview (My Year of Pinot Noir Series)
Part 2. Read the back story and meet the wine… Interview with James MacPhail, Winemaker, MacPhail Family Winery When did you start making wine, what was your position and with whom? I started...
View ArticleMove Over Dear a.k.a. Mourvédre
Mourvédre* and its cousins are a hot commodity in the USA right now. Mourvédre is one of 22 grapes known as Rhone Varieties. Fortunately you don’t have to go to France to taste these interesting...
View ArticleExcellent Chilean Red Wine Under $20
Because I love tasting wines from around the world, I have purchased many Chilean wines (as well as received samples). My big news is that I am blown away by how much the quality of Chile’s red wines...
View ArticleBest (Organic) Wine in America
Bonterra loosely translates from Italian as good earth. Bonterra Winery’s good earth seems to bring out the best in their grapes. I can not remember a time when I was more pleasantly surprised by a...
View ArticlePureCru Napa Valley by Mitch Cosentino
“I had been reminiscing about a small, hands-on entity where I could do it all myself again, like I did in the beginning.” Mitch Cosentino Hands-on winemakers making small amounts of lovingly-crafted...
View ArticlePassport to Pinot Noir: Russian River
I don’t know. It’s the heartbreak grape. Difficult to vinify. For me, it’s a metaphor for the process of art. You struggle and suffer against seemingly insuperable microclimatic odds, and only when...
View ArticleBlessing of the Grapes: Napa’s Mondavi Winery 2012
(Above: To mark the start of the 2012 harvest season, Father Ramon Pons, bilingual Associate Pastor at St. John the Baptist in Napa, blessed the first truckload of grapes to come into Mondavi winery...
View ArticleCurrent Favorite Red Wines
Two easy-drinking reds, La Famiglia Pirovano Barbera Oltrepo Pavese DOC (Whole Foods on sale $10, alcohol 13%) and Lava Cap, Estate Bottled Barbera El Dorado 2009 (Whole Foods $18, alcohol 14.7%)....
View ArticleEnjoying Wine in Spain
If you have ever been wine tasting, you have experienced tasting five wines in one sitting. Now imagine this at every lunch and every dinner for eight days. The trick of course is to not drink full...
View ArticleInternational Wine Friends
I enjoy collecting pictures of famous folks in the wine business (and chefs, too). This is Beyers Truter, a delightful, down-to-earth, and extremely famous winemaker in South Africa. He was relatively...
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