Wine

Do you have a store you love to hate? I do.Recently a friend texted me and asked if I buy wine at Costco. I don't.Well, there was this one time, I must shamefully admit, that I did buy a couple of bottles of Dom Perignon champagne there, because it was cheap. I have been known to deride this label as one for pimps and whores, and mindless jocks.But then it wasn't for me. It was a gift.My brother who lives near Kirkland, WA, a suburb of Seattle, loves everything Costco. Not only is his pantry full of Costco products but[...]

I like my white wine chilly. It is crispier, fruitier that way, less thick, less buttery. At home this is no problem. At restaurants it has unpredictable consequences. This past weekend we experienced a brand new one.When I pop the request for chill, most waiters or sommeliers place the wine bottle in some kind of cooling device, a tableside bucket of ice water, a tabletop cylindrical cooler or some variant thereof. Some however,  take the bottle elsewhere, to a central "chilling station". When this happens, watch out!Some high end restaurants keep all bottles in central serving stations, chilled or unchilled.[...]

"LaToya Jackson drinks a lot of white wine," said Jerrus about one his regulars at Fig & Olive, a swank West Hollywood restaurant. "She usually comes in with two other chicks and the three of them pound five bottles of white wine together."A local Stockton kid with youthful, infectious enthusiasm about wine, Jerrus Roxas is a graduate of our Friday night wine group, now a professional sommelier in Los Angeles. He recently re-visited his old haunts, still at home at Wine Wizard's, still amazed at the quality of bottles that appear in our blind tasting, especially Bordeaux. He was a[...]

There is a tired old joke about a tourist lost in upper Manhattan who asks, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" A local New Yorker answers, "practice, practice, practice." I can say something similar to wine tasters who want to achieve a certain level of acquaintance with the subject, "taste, taste, taste."A case in point.In  a recent blind tasting I took a smell and  sip  of a wine and I proclaimed, "2007 Vacqueras." Others around the table did the same and a discussion ensued, entertaining various guesses. When unveiled, it was indeed 2007 Vacqueras. A homerun!Impressed, my mates asked,[...]

When judging subjective entities such as art, food or wine, most seem blindly beholden to pundits that set tastes and act as kingmakers. Skepticism and critical thinking is at a minimum; so is self reliance and confidence. All this was underscored by a  recent restaurant experience.It turns out that a local chef in a nearby town won a competition in an episode Chopped, a Food Network show. He became locally famous as a result; so did hid restaurant. My wife, an avid follower of the Food Network has been clamoring to visit this restaurant for a while. Since it is[...]

Long time Californians are accustomed to the ups and downs of drought and flood cycles, especially in my area in the Northern Central Valley, dependent on water-hungry agriculture, yet fearful of high water networking around low-land in the Sacramento River Delta. Between years of overabundance and shortage, there are a few, optimal, calm ones.Presently we are three years into an epic drought - all our droughts are, at some point Biblical - and down-in-the-dumps. It is therefore much gratifying to receive elated news that the drought is actually doing some good.It was recently announced that 2014 will go down as[...]