Three-Step Classic Wine List Gameplan

Tweet Drawing up the perfect attack on a classic restaurant wine list creates the same adrenaline level NFL coaches experience prepping for Sunday games. At least it seems that way; it’s both exciting and nerve wracking knowing one or two calls can define a dinner’s outcome. Planning is required. Have we worked with the restaurant’s [...]

Wine Blog Confessions

Tweet As the 2012 wine blogging season kicked off, three notable wine bloggers weighed in with wine blogosphere predictions, analysis, and reflections.  In the last month, Steve Heimoff, Tom Wark, and Alder Yarrow posted their opinions on the evolution of the wine blogosphere, sustainable wine content creation, and/or why they blog.  I regularly follow these guys because [...]

Grower Champagne Makes Sense

Tweet The last few years taught me that Champagne is wine, not just bottled fireworks poised to explode on special occasions.  Champagne’s food and aperitif friendliness are more interesting to me now than at any other time during my twenty seven year wine zag. I used to zag around Champagne while others zigged straight at it. [...]

Wine In Vessels Photo Series

Tweet As crazy as it sounds, I really like to look at wine; in shops, cellar tanks, barrels, wine cellar racks, and especially proper glassware.  When you think about connecting visually with wine after juice leaves grape, vessels are non negotiable.  Unless, of course, spilling all over your rug or tablecloth produces perverse visual jollies. [...]

Pleiades XX, Thackrey, & Local Three: Authentic Collision

Tweet Some wine is described to be authentic. I have been meaning to build a working definition of authenticity for my own clarification and finally managed to squash a prolonged streak of procrastination after discovering ($25 ****) Sean Thackrey’s Pleiades XX on Atlanta’s Local Three Kitchen & Bar wine list. This adjective that has blossomed into standard wine enthusiast fodder, bandied throughout critical [...]

Wine Rock Star-Part 2

Tweet You don’t have to be a Rock Star to drink wine like one.  Rock Star Winos beguile fame, demagnetize paparazzi, leave crowd-free wakes, and sign no autographs.  Being a Rock Star Wino with the juice to indulge audiences in sensory, intellectual, and emotional celebration is unassuming and simple.   So, if you read Wine Rock [...]

Wine Rock Star-Part 1

Tweet I just finished reading Dave McIntyre’s recent piece in the Washington Post about ways to enjoy wine more in 2012.  He delivers a handful of useful, but ordinary suggestions for etching a couple more garden variety notches into your wine bedpost. Honestly, I was hoping for more.  Alas, a missed opportunity to share some [...]

2011 Wine Highlights Part 2- Wine Community

Tweet When I launched WineZag in 2009, I did it under a founding motto of “wine is a lubricant for human connection that holds no bias.”  The essence of my wine appreciation has always transcended the juice, gravitating to the center of human bonding and relationships that are accelerated by shared wine experiences; either during [...]

2011 Wine Highlights Part 1: Wine & Restaurants

Tweet While the best wine and food might still appear on my table over the next couple of weeks, 2011 is quickly shutting down like newly bottled Bordeaux and I catch myself reminiscing over the year that was in wine and food. These musings must not be mistaken for a quintessential nor ultimate reminiscence of [...]

Clos Rougeard 2007- A Wine List Automatic

Tweet Pouring over wine lists before meals is the ultimate public foreplay.  In advance of fine dining reverie, the hunt for favorites, values, rarities, ultimates, and classics is my secret little indulgence.  It’s a moment of truth that determines the tone of an evening’s meal.  I remember the same jittery excitement stepping into Coney Island’s [...]

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