$10 OR LESS AT TRADER JOE’S; THE WHITES
When it comes to wine prices, buyers often act irrational. With most consumer goods they search for the high quality at low prices, but with wine they stay within certain price ranges regardless of quality. Many convince themselves that defective wines they paid high prices for are actually good, while they think cheap wines are bad. Is that really so? Recently a friend of mine, Mark Gibson, an opinionated aficionado and true quality seeker, proposed that we assemble cheap wines from a store that carries a lot of them and let our palates decide. There is no better store[...]
ALBARINO; GUZZLE-AND-ENJOY
There are some wines that should not be intellectualized. Just buy and drink, preferably with matching foods and enjoy their simple pleasures. For me Albarino is foremost on that list. I have been buying them in Bay Area restaurants for years and enjoying them with seafood tapas and appetizers, with minimum curiosity and understated pleasure. It's a wine that has previously flown below most radars but nowadays better recognized, no longer a secret bargain in wine lists. As summer approached and our thoughts naturally turned to whites, going contrary to my instincts, I proposed an Albarino tasting.Albarino is the main[...]
JARVIS, MY SAVIOR
Am I blocked or just too busy at work?Since my return from vacation in Germany I haven't been able to write much, not with my short stories, nor with my blogs. I do have a very busy surgery schedule and there is nothing like 7 30 a.m. surgery start times - of which I have had plenty - to stifle my writing, since most of my creativity occurs early in the mornings. That said however, last Christmastime, when I returned from Turkey, despite a similarly busy schedule I went through the biggest burst of creativity, completing numerous half finished stories[...]
WITH HEMINGWAY ON THE BUS TO NUREMBERG
On a boring bus ride through the Bohemian countryside, headed from Prague to Nuremberg, I restart Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast in hopes of acquiring new inspiration from it. At the end of the trip we'll spend a short time in Paris that I hope I'll spend exploring the old master's steps in the Latin Quarter where he lived and wrote in the 1920's.It is slow going, both the ride and the read, for a young woman, our tour guide, keeps interrupting with random proclamations in the P. A. system. "The yellow fields you see to our left and right[...]
RAM SCROTUMS AND PRETZELS IN FRANCONIA; THE STICH WINERY (WEINGUT STICH)
Vacations are not only about R&R. They are also learning experiences. In my recent trip through rivers of Southern Germany I came to know a wine region new to me. Franconia is an ancient land with its own culture and dialect still in existence, despite having been geographically blended within Germany. It is mostly located within the state of Bavaria. Its largest cities are Nuremberg and Wurzberg. There, along the banks of the Main River, a tributary of the Rhine, lies a small wine appellation with the same name, that Germans refer to as Franken. In the small town of[...]
IN THE HEART OF GERMAN WINE COUNTRY; DOCTOR’S VINEYARD AND AN UNUSUAL TASTING (DR THANISCH WINES)
I face a tasting of one hundred and forty wines at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. We are in Bernkastel, Germany, on the Mosel River to which our ship glided over crystal calm waters reflecting steep hillside vineyards and colorful buildings of the still sleepy town. We are at the heart of German wine country, the region known as Mosel-Saar. Riesling is king here.We have traveled up the Rhine, a much wider, busier river lined with storybook castles, and turned into the Mosel, its tributary, at Koblenz, sailing though small, scenic German towns spread along the river. The surrounding[...]