Something To Drink
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This Week’s Wine, November 27, 2010
I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving. And now that the niceties are out of the way, we can get down to the serious business of fun and frolic during the holiday season. I was filling out a questionnaire the other day, sent by a wine p.r. person to wine writers, and she asked, "What
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This Week’s Wine November 9, 2010
With the holiday season coming over the horizon, it's time to prepare for visitors, for groups (some would say hordes) of friends, relatives and neighbors, dropping by to wish you well. They may be carrying empty wassail cups in hopes of receiving a refill, in the style of a friend from Dallas who used to
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Wine: October 21, 2010
Adam LaZarre fits the mental picture of a California winemaker, or at least a Californian, with light brown, shaggy, collar-length hair highighted by sun-bleached streaks, smile lines creasing pinkish cheeks, a joyful tone when he talks about wine–any wine– hands comfortable with the most delicate of crystal wine glasses. He sat across a table at
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This Week’s Wine: September 30, 2010
Many years ago, on an assignment to visit California wineries, I was cruising north on California Highway 29 through the town of Rutherford in Napa County. I slowed for intersecting traffic and saw, to my right, a small grove of giant Sequoia trees around what looked to be a winery. I turned into the driveway,
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This Week’s Wine, September 1, 2010
We're into September (my, how time flies when you're having fun), and that means the bubbles are getting ready to pop. The final months of the year, as we build to holiday toasts and year-end greetings, is the time when Champagne and other sparkling wines make the preponderance of their sales. There have been
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This Week’s Wine, August 17, 2010
Many millennia ago, as the Great Glacier receded through what is now upstate New York, its passage left a number of long, narrow lakes pointing north and south in the area between the cities today called Albany and Buffalo. Named by Indians or by 17th- and 18th-century frontiersmen mimicking them, we have Canandaigua, Cayuga, Conesus,
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This Week’s Wine, July 6, 2010
With picnics and poolsides a couple of favorite places to enjoy summer wines, we've been spending more time visiting and sipping than writing in recent weeks and we hereby apologize. But there are a lot of bargains and some good tasting out there, along with a few interesting trends in the wine business. Jordan, founded
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This Week’s Wine, May 5, 2010
The old and the new blend nicely in Hermann, Missouri, and a weekend spent among spring flowers and old friends, with the added benefit of good wine and food, always lifts the spirits. The last weekend of April has become a regular trip to celebrate the release of a new vintage of Norton, Stone Hill
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This Week’s Wine, April 13, 2010
The dynasties of European winemakers often go back seven or eight centuries. Three or four generations does it for Americans, but it's important to remember that the American wine industry took a hammer blow from Prohibition, and not long after its repeal, World War II came along. In effect, the industry stopped for some 25
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This Week’s Wine March 24, 2010
Robert Craig stood behind a makeshift table at Grapevine Wines, the Kirkwood wine retailer and, like every winemaker I've met, talked about his wines as if they were his children. "I've always liked wines that went well with food," he said, lifting a bottle and pouring the deep garnet wine into a glass. "That's why