M. Senegor

"Are you from the neighborhood?" I asked a young man sitting next to us at the bar. We were at Cocotte, a small French bistro in San Francisco, distinguishing itself as a "French Rottisserie", chickens roasting inside a prominent grill at an open kitchen in the back of the room. It was a small store-front restaurant with a tiny entrance into which they had managed to squeeze an L-shaped bar for ten."No," said the man in a friendly tone, "we're from the South Bay." He then proceeded to describe all that his group had ordered. I was surprised. The place[...]

"Four men will do anything to pass the most difficult test you've NEVER heard of," says a review in Rotten Tomatoes, about the movie Somm (2012),a documentary directed by Jason Wise.  I finally got around to viewing this film and, wine savvy as I think I am, I too had never heard of the Master Sommelier Exam that this movie depicts.It is about four thirty-something sommeliers preparing for this very difficult exam, vying for a much coveted - and rare - Master Sommelier title, and the red lapel pin that comes along with it. The test has a meager pass[...]

I have decided to take a short detour from wine every once in a while, to the closely related subject of food. Last night we had a jolting but instructive experience at a San Francisco restaurant I have come to know well, that exemplifies  culinary trends in the city.Troya has been my favorite Turkish restaurant of the many that have sprouted all over the Bay Area. In business for a decade, initially as a neighborhood place in a busy corner of Clement Street in the Richmond district, Troya has always featured Turkish cuisine with a decidedly San Francisco slant.They have[...]

There are times when the most memorable wine experiences occur in surprisingly unassuming circumstances. I was reminded of such a highlight from a recent 2012 Italian vacation that involved a bottle of Amarone.It was towards the end of a Po Valley biking trip in Northern Italy, where we found ourselves smack in the center of the Veneto appellation. Here Valpolicella was the main red wine and Amarone reigned supreme as rare and expensive, an elite product of the region. Intensely concentrated, raisiny, with high alcohol content, Amarone had never been on my list of favorites. Nevertheless, with my curiosity peaked[...]

Wine Spectator, an influential U.S. monthly, issues a yearly list of wine friendly restaurants. Entitled The Best Wine Lists of 2014, this year's edition just appeared. It is a massive compilation, currently  over three thousand, of mostly U.S. restaurants, often including some highly respected ones in major cities, wine destinations, and lesser known establishments with local reputations. Foreign countries are also included. The listed restaurants have only one common feature: exceptional wine lists. As I browsed through it I was taken aback by a listing of 21 Turkish restaurants, all in Istanbul except for two. It was larger than France[...]

"This is a syrah oriented wine group," said Todd, a relative newcomer to our Friday night tastings. It was a surprising revelation.A large tasting had just ended, seventeen bottles sampled by sixteen of us. Since our tastings are free-style, no pre-announced themes, no formal invitations or RSVP's, there is a certain unpredictability to Friday nights. Yet, as it turns out, there are also some predictable trends.On this occasion we had six syrah based wines, the most common varietal that appeared,  Cabarnet Sauvignon coming second (two Napa, two Bordeaux). There were no pinot noirs.I now realized that indeed, in recent years[...]