Three-Step Classic Wine List Gameplan

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 wine [...]

Grower Champagne Makes Sense

The last few years taught me that Champagne is wine, not just bottled fireworks poised to explode on special occasions.  Champagne’s food and aperitif friendliness are more interesting to me now than at any other time during my twenty seven year wine zag. I used to zag around Champagne while others zigged straight at it.  I [...]

Pleiades XX, Thackrey, & Local Three: Authentic Collision

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 wine [...]

2011 Wine Highlights Part 1: Wine & Restaurants

While the best wine and food might still appear on my table over the next couple of weeks, 2011 is quickly shutting down like newly bottled Bordeaux and I catch myself reminiscing over the year that was in wine and food. These musings must not be mistaken for a quintessential nor ultimate reminiscence of global [...]

Clos Rougeard 2007- A Wine List Automatic

Pouring over wine lists before meals is the ultimate public foreplay.  In advance of fine dining reverie, the hunt for favorites, values, rarities, ultimates, and classics is my secret little indulgence.  It’s a moment of truth that determines the tone of an evening’s meal.  I remember the same jittery excitement stepping into Coney Island’s Luna [...]

Erpacrife Nebbiolo-Best Sparkling Wine Ever?

Rarely do the polarizing forces du jour swirling around wine’s combustible circles, like new world vs. old world, traditional vs. modern, or natural vs. unnatural(?), create radically new standard bearers overnight. Each corner in the world of wine is too steeped in history, nature, method, and skill to be knocked out in a single round. So how [...]

3 Reasons Puech-Haut Prestige 2009 Is Top Holiday Wine

Imagine the convenience of someone delivering two cases of one very perfect red wine to your front door every year at the start of the holiday season.  Not 100 point and $6,000 a case perfect, just perfectly versatile, delicious, and affordable red wine for all the usual and familiar holiday situations. Something to serve at oversubscribed [...]

Calvet-Thunevin Hugo On Turtle Creek Mansion List

Once again I found myself staring at a classic wine list, this time at the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, that was deep in severely marked up classic Bordeaux, Burgundy, and California Cabernet.  Looking for an after dinner bottle to enjoy with some colleagues did  not call for $300 California Cabernet, $600 Burgundy, nor [...]

De Forville Nebbiolo 2009 – Another Rosenthal Wine Value

Neal Rosenthal Wine Merchants was table #2 and (*** $20) 2009 De Forville Langhe Nebbiolo was wine #3.  Rosenthal was one of nine importers and distributors showcasing 45 wines in total at the 8th annual Ball Square Fine Wines Grand Tasting. Without too much surprise, Rosenthal’s portfolio offered exciting moments at another chock-a-block event where sellers [...]

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 [...]

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