Loire Valley

  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[...]

As the days shorten and nigths get long, the mornings foggy, with cold humidity penetrating deep into our joints,  winter doldrums begin to set in. Here in Northern California we are blessed with no snow, no blizzards, no hurricanes. Instead it rains, and it has rained a lot this year. This is the time when all my patients flock into my office with worsening back pains and we all look forward to sunshine which will hopefully arrive  in late February. As the excitement of the holidays wane, the remaining bleakness of winter invariably turns my thoughts to Chinon, a suitable salve for the[...]

  A recent Wall Street Journal article about what it takes to be a somellier contained a number of interesting surprises. The one that especially caught my eye was mentioned as a side issue. Interviewing  a New York City sommellier by the name of Michael Madrigale who works at what I surmise to be a hoity-toity  Upper West Side restaurant called Bar Boulud, the author noted the following anecdote: when her companion asked for a glass of Sancerre while dining there, Mr. Madrigale responded, "Sancerre is the salmon of wines" and directed her to some obscure Greek wine. I have[...]