I am a big advocate for keeping tasting notes. Being a fan of the analog life, I still keep my notes using the old fashioned tools called pens and paper. The photo above is of the notebook I used while writing my book, Pour Me Another. It is a handy size and fits right in […]
Amazon.com is not collecting California sales tax on purchases made on their site from California. I just made a purchase, a new wine journal, and they didn’t charge me the California sales tax. So, if you were holding back on buying my book, Pour Me Another: An Opinionated Guide to Gold Country Wines, because of […]
Pour Me Another: An Opinionated Guide to Gold Country Wine is now available! That link will take you to the Amazon.com sales page. I am working on formatting the book for Kindle and Nook as we speak. That should be ready in 7 to 10 days. Pour Me Another will be the definitive guide to […]
It was pretty hot here in the Bay Area earlier this week. While it has cooled off now, the start of the week was definitely White Wine Weather (the other “www”). I opened up a bottle of a 2009 Verdelho from Nine Galbles Vineyard. It is such a nice wine. The color is the palest […]
Last night I got together with a friend to plan my first book signing / book release party. We look just like the picture. I swear. My friend has very generously offered to host the event, which I appreciate immensely. As is our wont, there was wine involved: An ’05 Mount Aukum Syrah. She had […]
When I tell Bay Area people that I write about Gold Country Wines, almost everybody thinks Napa and Sonoma Counties, even when I have clearly said “Gold Country”. Then I’ll say, “No, Sierra Foothills wines.” This generates blank looks. “Placerville,” I’ll say, “on the way to South Lake Tahoe.” At this point, astonishment will render […]
Sera Fina Cellars, about whom I’ve written before, also makes this (spoiler alert!) lovely, sweet white. It is made from the malvasia grape, yet another grape variety that I was unfamiliar with until recently. The malvasia grape is grown in Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, and the Canary Islands among other locations. There are both white and […]
Matthew Latkiewicz over at Grub Street New York, recently posted a humorous and pointed article about judging wines by their labels. The illustration, by Jen Cotton, borrowed from their site, illustrates the basic classifications of labels he identified and some of the sub-classifications. I am not certain if he has yet identified all of the […]
Having lived for a while in London, I heard and started using the word “plonk”, which is generally considered a pejorative term meaning “cheap wine”, usually not very good. It is also true that it was often used in conversation to simply mean “table wine” or “vin ordinaire” which is the way I and my […]
I haven’t been writing posts ahead of my posting them. This would normally not be a problem. Until recently. You see, I occasionally suffer from gout. And the past week has been one of those occasions. Gout is an very painful inflammation of a joint, in this case where my big toe joins my foot. […]
