In Vino Veritas

I’ve been asked how I choose what I write about, and my response is usually that I write about freedom, justice, life, and three legged pigeons… okaaaay, maybe not so much the first three. I have a hard time grasping the fact that anywhere up to a million people read what I write. I see the numbers and it’s staggering. I think to myself “Self… how should you entertain such a vast sum of people? Should I just write about…

Life has been odd lately. I think I'm heading in one direction and then the earth heaves beneath my feet tossing me in another direction altogether. I thought for a short while that wine would be pushed to the back seat for the time being, and then out of the blue plans changed. I moved from Los Angeles to the North Bay and then just moments later the Earth shifted and I found myself rolling back down the Pinball machine smack…

    Aging wine is a tricky practice. How many times have you been so enthralled with a wine when you went wine tasting that you bought a whole case, or maybe you just purchased a few bottles because the price ticket was exorbitant? This is kind of like when I tasted the 2003 Lazzarito vineyard Barolo by Ettore Germano. The grape is Nebbiolo and it was giving off intense lush aromatics that I…

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…

Last week I wrote about Toscana. This week I want to discuss the Italian wine region of Campania.     Campania is very southern, in fact only Basilicata and Calabria are further south on the mainland. Lazio is to the northeast, Molise to the north and Puglia to the northwest. Again I’m just going to go over the DOCGs of the region. As of 2011 there are four: Side note: DOCGs do not necessarily…

Imagine, if you will, hunting a tyrannosaurus rex with a Nerf gun. There you are sitting in a tree you climbed, scoping for the illusive T-Rex. There are myriad raptors in the jungle doing their thing, but you’re holding out for the big guy. After hours of waiting, a cacophony of sound erupts from the floor below. Dinosaurs were running from something, and they were running fast. Tremors start shaking the tree, and they’re getting bigger. It’s heading…

A friend of mine sent me a proposal for a restaurant. He wants me to look over it and give him my opinion.  I won’t go into detail on the project, because it hasn’t been pitched yet. However, the prospect of looking it over brings to mind all manner of tasks I’ve been presented in the past. When I first moved to San Francisco I was asked to put together an art lounge bar called Madrone. I spent countless hours…

Not too long ago, I was in Washington DC when a foot of snow crippled the government.       They declared a snow emergency, which meant that cabs could charge an extra $15 per ride, causing a 2-mile cab ride to end up at $35. Despite snowy obstacles, I arrived up at the Capitol precisely when I was supposed to. There were two…

(disclaimer: any run-on sentences in this post are intentional… others, maybe not so much, but this one yes. If you cannot handle reading run-on sentences try pinching a body part while reading this. It may help occupy the grammar pain center of your brain just enough to get you through it. I highly recommend attempting to read this regardless, because it’s fun and I wrote it damn it. Thank you for being you and for your time, and I…

    Sometimes I approach the world of wine in a light and fluffy manner. I try desperately to engage everyone and to not alienate anyone. This is inherently impossible given the diverse nature of the human race, and the fact that I toe the line of what is dignified with my verbose, sometimes crass, and neurotic babbling. That said, please note that if you do not like one post that…

If you like big, fruit forward, easy drinking, affordable wines then look to Sicily (Sicilia), Italy. Back in the day, before Italy really started regulating wine, Sicily was doing some shady stuff. They would ferment wine in large quantities, and then pipe the wine directly from the tanks into tankers. These ships laden with big juice would traverse the waters to Northern Italy. This was before the shift in temperatures that…

Well another birthday just happened. They say that time speeds up as you get older, but for me it has slowed down to a crawl. I don't mind in the slightest. I just started my third quarter on my quest for a Masters degree. I have three more quarters of Psychology left before I switch schools and start the Masters program. Being in school is delicious. It gets the brain juices…