In Vino Veritas

I went to Occidental over the weekend with the explicit goal of achieving waffle nirvana. How did this happen you ask? My cohort in crime and I beelined it to a restaurant called Howard Station Café. Actually the route was more like the path a kid with ADHD would take if you let him loose in a candy store (makes me think of the onomatopoeia buzzzzz, which is just like a bee, so there you have it). When told we…

The last two articles I posted were on the grandiose methods of Biodynamic farming. The impetus for these articles was a private tour and tasting at Benziger Family Winery. Their estate vineyards are done entirely using these methods. In some ways the labor needed to put together such an organic ecosystem is mind boggling, but with almost two dozen family members helping they seem to have it well under control. Arriving at the vineyard I immediately was impressed by the people…

This is my second installment of Wines on the cheap tip.

I’ve had my years of affluence and my years of absolute poverty. Strangely enough some of the most relaxing, peaceful, blissed out times I’ve had were when I had only the change in my pocket to my name.

Last week I talked about pairing food with wine. I’ll come back to that in a future blog, but I was asked a question today that I’d like to touch on. How come some Chardonnays I absolutely love and others I can’t stand? They’re all the same grape so why are they so different even in the same price range? I’ve talked about how different regions have different growing and vinifying styles,…

There are so many times when I see someone looking at wines in a store with that lost look in their eyes. They are aimlessly searching in hopes that a wine will jump off the shelf and shout “I’m affordable, and have the exact flavor profile that you’ve been waiting for!” Except every time the wines stay on their shelf, and the customer ends up going with a…