AN/2 & Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894 at Barcelona

The world is better off for places like Barcelona.  Wines such as Anima Negra AN/2 from Majorca’s red callet grape and Bodegas Palacios Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894 from Rioja’s white viura variety don’t make it onto just any wine list.  But at Barcelona Restaurant and Wine Bar, ten minutes off of I-84 in (of all places?) West Hartford’s [...]

Roagna Paje Barbaresco 2003 and Grindhouse Burgers

Last week I paired a really ugly hamburger with an indisputably pretty wine.                       The burger was just as delicious as it was ugly.  The wine, on the other hand, was as graceful, balanced, and pretty as folks have come to expect from a Luca Roagna [...]

The Wine and Food Culture Divide

I’ll admit to spending more time than it’s probably worth thinking about nuances in wine and food culture.  For example, I ponder how obvious it is that most of us Americans act with righteous self confidence buying, ordering, and cooking the foodstuffs and ingredients we prefer. We’ll ask questions freely when shopping or ordering to [...]

Clos de la Roilette & Ramps

Despite spending the better part of this weekend in Ontario tasting through a couple hundred Niagara wines, I woke up this morning with ramps on the brain. Not Pinot, Riesling, or Chardonnay…..just ramps. Each spring I’ll  trip over an early seasonal ramp at some “farm to table” spot and turn fanatic securing a personal stash [...]

Kitchen A Trattoria BYOB and 2009 Domaine la Garrigue

Eventually you find Kitchen A Trattoria discretely tucked away off a main street in St. James, Long Island.  Worth the momentary measure of driving confusion, the restaurant delivers a top BYOB opportunity to pair Long Island’s most impeccably crafted, mouth watering, rustic Italian fare with your cellar’s treasures.  Hundreds of miles from my own wine cellar, [...]

Balaban’s Wine Shop and Restaurant: St. Louis’ Destination for Wine Lovers

I traveled to St. Louis steadily over the past five years and only discovered Balaban’s wine shop and restaurant on the evening celebrating the sale of our St. Louis business and the conclusion of my regular travel to the city.  Had I known about the wine lover’s destination sooner, it would have been a regular [...]

Saumur, Champagne, and a Little Giant

I have been eating and shopping for wine in New York City this past week and will share a connected vignette of a Saumur-Champigny shopping find, a transported Champagne note, and a wine friendly restaurant.  This week’s quick holiday in New York, where my wine and personal roots run deepest, produced unfavorably opposite impressions on my wallet [...]

Revisiting Cambridge’s T.W. Food

Walden Street floats in unremarkable limbo somewhere between Harvard’s and Fresh Pond’s respective square and roundabout.  I managed to discover the street in the autumn of 2007 checking out Tim Wiechmann’s newly opened T.W. Food, and immediately returned for a second confirming fix of Wiechmann’s brilliant and individually styled french country cuisine.  Because it was [...]

Beaujolais Tasting Recipe: Sweet & Sour Onion Sage Bruschetta

Wine needs appropriate food to dance with with even in critically serious tasting situations.  It’s one of a few life rules to steadily honor.  As such, I reflexively succumb to a ceremonial tasting day duty, before each of our group’s monthly blind tasting soirees, of preparing a few things that are different and hopefully more [...]

Bottles Restaurant: Wine Lover Oasis in Puerto Rico

Bottles 5 Tabonuco Street Guaynabo, Puerto Rico 00968 (787) 775-1210 or (787) 775-0604 Respectable wine service on the Northern shores of Puerto Rico has been as rare as white Christmases on this Isla del Encanto.  I have exhausted all possibilities over 25 years of habitual Isla Verde retreats.  The hunt turns up poorly stored, warm, overpriced [...]

Next Page »