Blog Archives
Break Out The Oysters and…Red Wine?!?
I know. Oysters and red wine. It sounds so…unappealing. That is, to my particularly persnickety preferences. I do love white wine and steak. But that doesn’t seem as radical. Hey, I’m a drink-what-you-like kind of person, but bivalves and big reds are one of the very few things I can’t get behind. So I was [More]
If It’s Cold, It’s Sold: Prà Morandina Valpolicella
As a retail wine guy, one of the mantras of the business (and grocery in general) is “Stack it high and watch it fly.” For any beverage (beer/wine/cider/soda/water) the other old saw is “If it’s cold, it’s sold.” You don’t see red wine a lot, if ever, in the cooler, though. That’s changing, as more [More]
This Italian White Wine Belongs in Your Cellar and It’s a Great Value
In the halls of legendary wines rewarding decades of patience in a subterranean cellar, surely reds reign supreme. Burgundy, Bordeaux, Barolo, and beyond. But at a recent media dinner I was flabbergasted by the ageability and affordability* of an Italian white wine: Garofoli Verdicchio. This winery is making surprising whites, recalibrating any notion that cellaring wines [More]
This Wine is Indestructible
Sometimes you defeat a wine, sometimes a wine defeats you. This was my experience with a recent sample bottle of Cantele Amativo. I tried my darndest to tame it, but had to give in and be humbled in/by its presence. This is an Italian wine from the Salento region. Located within Puglia, the heel of [More]
Happiness is a Sparkling Rosé Made from Nerello Mascalese
I feel so passionately about drinking sparkling rosé, especially examples made from unusual grapes like Nerello Mascalese, that I’d gladly pedal this pink bicycle around town to try and win new converts. I have had a lifelong (well, since I attained legal drinking age) love of dry rosé and my feeling is adding bubbles just [More]
