Breathing Quintarelli

Alex pointed towards a hilltop as we entered the valley town of Negrar and I respectfully inhaled a first breath of Quintarelli air.  We were on our way to visit Francesco Grigoli, Guiseppe Quintarelli’s grandson.  Climbing a series of switchback roads and white knuckle turns landed us at a modest home sitting atop the cellars [...]

Northeast Italy Wine and Food Trip

Next week WineZag (me) hits the roads of Northeast Italy’s wine provinces. What else should an American father do when his Copenhagen-based-twenty-one-year-old son suggests joining up for some Italian wine and food immersion? Faced with a shrinking window for these father/son adventures at a stage of life that everyone warned comes too quickly, you count your [...]

Amsterdam Wine and Food

While food and wine still do not rank as keywords for Amsterdam’s travel websites, it is time to cut the canal city some slack. Visiting Amsterdam as a young man in the 1980′s and 90′s conjured immersive travel images of great contrast to the Amsterdam we experienced this weekend.  While our first day was reserved for [...]

Blind Wine Tasting and Coke

During the final week of every “old” year I head to the same, sun scorched lazy Puerto Rico beach to give my peripatetic brain enough space to subconsciously prioritize and ponder only the most important issues. Blind wine tasting made the cut this year, triggered by some catch up reading of Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Blink.  If [...]

Life of Wine

How can fine wine and all its inherent trappings be so extraordinarily compelling?  It is a fair question, don’t you think?  Archaeological evidence from Iran’s mountains suggests wine production and consumption have remained perpetual threads in our human fabric for 5,100 years; as if humans need wine.  What about fermented grape juice makes it so [...]

90 Plus Cellars Tasting Produces Nameless Pleasure

In every blind tasting there is secret hope for fresh discovery and the eradication of closely held biases like perpetually ignored regions, varieties, producers, or vintages.  While the blind tasting experience is completely unrelated to luxurious enjoyment of wine with a meal, they serve as uniquely productive platforms for continuing wine education. Recently, I shared [...]

90+ Cellars Wines and Paul Bloom Pleasure Theory

Are wines that enthusiasts buy, drink, and derive pleasure from somehow linked to what they know about their origin, craftsmanship, and history? According to Yale Professor Paul Bloom’s TED talk, while it should be just as possible to enjoy a wine of unknown source and origin, it simply isn’t.  The following is a really enjoyable and fascinating [...]

Bordeaux Wine Cellar ROI

Bordeaux dominates my cellar inventory of wines preceding the 1995 vintage.  That is nothing more than a happy fact of life for collectors with the advantage of early access to these wines prior to mind numbing price escalation. Last week at a 2000 Bordeaux tasting dinner I attended, one of the younger participants who works in [...]

Moved By Wine, Food, and People

I find myself perseverating over the intersection of wine, food, and humanity on internet-less JetBlue flight #411 from Boston to San Diego.  It is not as lofty a mind game as it sounds.  I’ve just been thinking about how thirty-six hours at the 2012 Wine Bloggers Conference in Portland, Oregon this weekend might play out; [...]

BYOB Boston Laws Defy Consumer Rights

A continued remnant of Prohibition era legislation that only helps big wholesalers prosper by locking down the market, turns Massachusetts wine collectors into criminals if they attempt to ship favorite wines to their homes across state borders; even when the wines are not for sale in Massachusetts.  Bay State collectors have learned to live under [...]

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