Canlis: A Seattle Food and Wine Oasis

Canlis is so much more than a place to eat and drink well in Seattle.  A combination of the scintillating year-old menu rejuvenation driven by ex-Eleven Madison Park Chef Jason Franey and the Canlis family’s sustained approach to warmth and hospitality leaves diners with nothing less than a spa-like afterglow on each visit.  Last year [...]

Connecting Intellectual and Palate Learning: Tasting Two Sakes and California Cabernet

An insatiable hunger for discovery and wine education is rewarded every time I taste wines in peer groups.  Without the chance to examine lots of wines every day over an extended period, even frequent tastings of one wine per sitting lays down hurdles to thorough assessment most easily cleared via contextual, side-by-side tastings.   The most [...]

Boston Troquet’s Cellar Dregs Are Wine Lover’s Treasures

Long ago, Troquet cemented its reputation with New England wine enthusiasts as the quintessential fine dining spot in Boston to order and drink memorable wine.   Actually, it all started with Chris Campbell’s earlier Commonwealth Avenue project UVA , a laid back spot offering unassuming atmosphere, serious food, easy prices, and a wine program that brought [...]

Menton: Reaching For the Stars (Michelin?) from Boston’s Fort Point

Menton’s team would be discovering and learning in only their third week of service, and we would be celebrating a full and exact 25 years of marriage; an intriguing juxtaposition of experience.  Still, I decided to ring up Eli Feldman, Director of Operations at Barbara Lynch Gruppo, to squeeze into their newest project for our [...]

Affordability and Value in Las Vegas’ Trophy Wine Jungle

I find it exhilarating digging through overpriced, top-heavy wine lists filled with $100-a-glass labels in search of affordability or value. I first remember getting that sensation 35 years ago, opening the Racing Form back in Brooklyn at Aqueduct Race Track looking for the day’s long shot. Garage sale hunters seem to chase a [...]

WineChap.com: When Wine Lists Matter Most

I am guilty of choosing and patronizing restaurants with quality wine lists first, great food second.  Preferring  a reasonable level of symbiosis, my restaurant choices are disproportionately weighted by wine programs.  If this resonates and you are more jazzed by contents of a subterranean cellar than walk-in refrigeration, or you just need a dose of [...]

Wine and Food at Troquet: Half of Uncanny New York Analog

On August 26, 2009 Frank Bruni inked his last New York Times Dining column answering a group of questions that follow around restaurant critics with pulpits as authoritative as his.   Finding great value is on everyone’s minds these days, and his “top value spot” answer to New York foodies neatly covered two of my favorite [...]

Zen, Hot Dogs, and Albarino

Yes, as the post’s title reflects, there is wine involved.  But this simple, value infused story of Willy completely transcends the bottle of Rias Baixas  blended white varietals I presented to him a few mornings ago in our annual Christmas gift exchange (I always get his wife’s heavenly spiced papaya dish) on a beach we ritually retreat to near San Juan, Puerto Rico.
At the end of [...]

Courting Mencia: How Have I Lived Without You?

Bear with me, I am falling in love again.  I have been peripatetically traversing the Ribeira Sacra and Bierzo regions by tasting every Mencia wine I manage to unearth and then blabbering away about the new discoveries here at WineZag.   A byproduct of utter submission to my new Mencia tick, I recently met up with Joe Austekewicz, wine director at Yankee Spirits, who just returned from a foray through these very regions alongside Eric Solomon .
Traveling [...]

One-Word Buying Strategy and a Must-Have Wine

I look forward to hearing from Matt Kramer in his regular Wine Spectator column.  He delivers “regular guy” sensibility with intellectual strength wrapped in an entertaining style.  His cut-to-the-chase humility combines with child-like amusement when discovering sources of fairly priced, quality wine that are messengers for their place of origin.  I mean wines that unleash vineyard identity, maybe [...]

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