Chicago Wine & Ribs + Pizza & Hot Dog Sides

Like all great cities, eating and drinking in Chicago is a dual proposition.  While the likes of Alinea, Moto, and Green Zebra ping away at culinary pleasure sensors, the city’s midwest soul food circuits beckon.  I developed my own ritual patterns for Chicago’s simpler local eating more than twenty years ago, always making sure to [...]

2011 Wine Highlights Part 2- Wine Community

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 dinner [...]

High Quality $30 Oregon Pinot & Raymond Usseglio Deal

I guess I’m thankful Tower Wine & Spirits is located in my new “transitional” Atlanta neighborhood near where Piedmont meets Cheshire Bridge. While I live in Boston, I have been spending a lot of time working in Atlanta and it made sense to skip the hotel scene and just get an apartment.  With lots of open evenings [...]

Sell Wine, Ban Water in New York Supermarkets

A bill is about to hit the floors of both the New York State Assembly and Senate that would permit supermarkets to start selling wine statewide.  If the bill happens to pass, it would close out a thirty year argument in New York, one that has been neatly opposed by the state’s local independent wine shop lobby. [...]

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 [...]

Wine Bottega and Clos Rougeard: Case for Social Media Wine Marketing

The ever present fragility of my inflated confidence born from half a life of wine enthusiasm can be awfully humbling.  Every year I discover a winery, region, or pool of knowledge that showers self doubt on the veracity of my commitment for exploring and learning about wine; “How could I claim to know anything, really, [...]

Costco Wine: Neither 90 Points Nor $15 and Under

90 Points of Costco Wine, written on June 9, 2009, turned out to be the most popular WineZag post yet. Untold sums of people search multiple forms of a “Costco Wine” phrase every day and the post drives a high volume of “wine aware” organic search traffic to this blog. Some of those vistors poke around [...]

Acme Fine Wines: Notable Wine Sherpas For Hunters of California’s Next Great Bottle

Acme Fine Wines, in St. Helena, is a California wine-jungle supply tunnel for hunters of the next undiscovered trophy wine.  Not every wine they sell is still under the radar screen or high in value-to-quality measures, as evidenced by the Harlan sitting on their showcase shelve of hand procured bottles.  Also, not all their inventory [...]

Wine-Searcher.com Turns Joys of Wine Shopping into Risky Anonymity

If wine-searcher.com has its way, their claim and grip on wine market transparency will replace the joyful pleasures of physical wine browsing and shopping.  Wine enthusiasts will be relegated to replaying memories of crouching dusty floors and scavenging Sam’s (Chicago wino history) original North Avenue location’s end bins for discoveries and deals.  No longer will [...]

Three Sparkling Wines Upstaged By Patricia Boyer-Domergue’s Profound Minervois

We rightfully anchored our post graduation ceremony celebration with a potpourri of sparklers including two that previously received favorable reviews here, NV Chidaine Montlouis Methode Traditionelle Brut Loire and NV Aubry Brut Premier Cru, Champagne plus a really interesting and exotic sparkling Malvasia Dell’Emilia value that you will read about at WineZag soon. But on this late afternoon [...]

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