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 [...]

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 [...]

The Wine and Food Culture Divide

Tweet 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 [...]

Value Discovery: 2006 Hecht & Bannier Minervois at Flyte

Tweet It’s a rarity, but I found myself in Nashville, TN last week.  With business entertainment very much on the agenda, I searched for one solid restaurant with a decent wine list and found myself at Flyte World Dining and Wine drinking ($18 ***1/2) 2006 Hecht & Bannier Minervois.  This Languedoc-Roussillon stole my attention, and that’s saying a [...]

Kitchen A Trattoria BYOB and 2009 Domaine la Garrigue

Tweet 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 [...]

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

Tweet 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 [...]

Saumur, Champagne, and a Little Giant

Tweet 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 [...]

Revisiting Cambridge’s T.W. Food

Tweet 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 [...]

Bottles Restaurant: Wine Lover Oasis in Puerto Rico

Tweet 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, [...]

2005 Clos Rougeard Les Poyeux and Menton Boston

Tweet In both cases, drinking 2005 Clos Rougeard (click for review) and luxuriating over dinner at Barbara Lynch’s Menton (click for review) in Boston’s Fort Point extension last week were opportunities for critical return visits.  I first tasted the entry level 2005 Clos Rougeard Saumur-Champigny a couple of months back and made my one and only previous visit [...]

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