Wine

I recently found myself in Rome, Italy, on a Friday night, an ocean and continent away from my coveted wine tasting group, traveling with my wife Julie, her son Bobbie and his wife Meghan . In our first night in this timeless city, after walking through its various landmarks for countless hours,  we alighted in Il Barroccio, a touristy restaurant on Via dei Pastini, not far from the Pantheon. It was in a side street full of lively restaurants, their outdoor tables three seats across on each side, leaving a narrow gauntlet for a steady stream of passersby. Drawn by[...]

As I pack for a two week vacation in Italy, my dislike of Italian wines legendary among my wine friends, I  pause for a moment to reflect on a peculiarity of the wine experience, one that will see me through my upcoming trip: wines that might be disliked at home, somehow taste different in their own homes.There is no better example of this than the bottle you see above, a German red from the Pfalz region of Southwestern Germany, varietals unknown.Germany is not known for its reds, sweet whites being more renown in the high latitudes of this cooler region.[...]

I once had a cross-eyed girlfriend. She was not grotesquely so, no Marty Feldman. She merely had one eye slightly off-kilter, but she was otherwise very lovely. Her eyes, so subtly but distinctly defective, in my eyes, added to her beauty. I was reminded of her last night, during our weekly Friday night tasting and mentioned it to my group as we were discussing defects in wine.One of our traditional favorites, Domaine Tempier Bandol, that hails from southern Provence, along the Mediterranean coast, east of Marseilles, a wine that we think features the best expression of the Mouvedre grape, has[...]

My recent preoccupation with Bordeaux vintages took me down memory lane into certain years that I recall as landmarks that I experienced in my own wine journey. Two in particular had to do with pinot noir.The first occurred soon after I joined my Friday night wine tasting group in late 1995. In those days I was mostly a California chardonnay enthusiast and did not have a palate for much more. I discovered that my new wine group was very Burgundy oriented, and while they sampled a large variety of wines, pinot noir from this famed region, and the precious few domestic winemakers who[...]

I have touted the virtues of off-year Bordeaux wines in past blogs. Recently we journeyed into this world deeper with a tasting devoted to inferior vintages with bottles assembled from various vendors and our personal collections. It took place in the house of George and Gail Heron, proprietors of Fine Wines of Stockton, with 10 tasters in attendance. The driving force behind this was Mike Hernandez of Fresno, who spent the last six months scouring merchants for such wines. He contributed half the bottles to the tasting (many others he bought were not included because some were actually good vintages, and others[...]

For those cabarnet sauvignon and merlot lovers out there I have surprising news: you will get the best bang for your buck with Bordeaux!For the average American drinker Bordeaux has an image problem. Hard to pronounce names, a seemingly infinite number of Chateau's, bottle labels that don't carry varietal designations, to name a few. Worse yet, it is considered expensive, a luxury item. Its well known need for long term storage before consumption restricts it to the domain of wealthy snobs who can afford fancy wine caves. Yes, all of the above is true. But for only a small portion[...]