Wine

  Back in the day, when Merlot was super-popular, Duckhorn, a Napa Valley winery was renown for making the best wine from this varietal. In the current post-Sideways, no-fucking-Merlot era, Duckhorn still retains this fame. I never tasted this wine. Too expensive, I told myself, not worth spending that much for, of all things, Merlot. All this changed on the eve of last Easter weekend on our way to Paris. Well, almost!   We flew to Paris for dinner, at the Eiffel Tower. I had been invited there by an old Istanbul high school mate Kevork Apkaryan, nowadays a Parisian.[...]

  I have a small collection of magnums, mostly Bordeaux, lofty labels. I never know when to open them. Years ago I bought this Cotes du Rhone made by Delas, a négociant in the Rhone area. It was a hum-drum label, cheap, unworthy of a spot in my wine cabinet with august company. So I kept it out. The bottle sat atop our kitchen counter for nearly a decade. It was there for so long that it became a fixture, like the electrical sockets nearby. We saw it every day, yet we didn’t. Every once in a while I wondered[...]

A unique Paris meal to be remembered for a lifetime at Jules Verne, the exclusive restaurant atop the Eiffel Tower.

I am not a big fan of Las Vegas. I don’t gamble, enjoy over-the-top entertainment or frequent strip joints. Still, I do go to Vegas frequently for a regularly recurring surgical conference. On these occasions my sole pleasure in this city of sin is exploring zany wine lists. This year was no exception. First some background. Eight years ago I wrote about a bottle of 1982 Chateau Petrus that went for $12,000 at L’Atelier de Joel Rebuchon, a restaurant at MGM Grand (see my blog, Las Vegas Insanity, 2/7/2010). It was a regular, 24 oz bottle. The exact same bottle[...]

At the time California Merlot had fallen into a most dismal state of hateful mediocrity equivalent to today’s Kardashian sisters.

Napa has planted itself into this unspoiled valley. It will not be long before Goldeneye clones metastasize and swallow up the locals.