Nearly every time I slice Grana Padano or Parmigiano Reggiano into thin wedges to have with wine, I am reminded of Rod Steiger. When I arrived in Los Angeles in 1979, I secured a job as a waiter at La Scala Malibu, in those days an iconic establishment with an elite …
In the building where I was staying in Barcelona last week lives a lady who sits down to play the piano everyday. Her halting rendition of classics, known and obscure, filled the stairwell and resonated through the elevator shaft which was located next to my room. I was filled with …
Wine making is as much a philosophical endeavour as any, probably more than most; for liquids capture the life force— the essential Prana or Chi— as well as the essence of intention. Therefore, the glass contains not only the wine, but the winemaker’s intent and to a certain extent, his or her …
2011 Tomero Torrontés “Wisps of perfume, lilac, verbena, jasmine…finishing dry on notes of clove and chestnut.” I try —though not always successfully—to avoid the curlicued, quasi-baroque descriptives when commenting on wine. Still, far too many reviewers—myself included, no doubt— fall over themselves reaching for the lofty oenological bon mot, one …
In Victoria Finlay’s fine book, ‘Colour’, she devotes several pages to the story of the “first” pigment used for painting, Ochre. Along the way, Finlay relates Ochre’s importance to Australian Aboriginal culture; entire thousand-mile round-trip peregrinations devoted to obtaining and bringing back the red clay. Considered most sacred was the …
Have you ever had a long conversation with someone you just met, and weeks later the conversation still resonates, pinging around in your head at unexpected moments? Well, that’s what running into this wine was. ( I didn’t exactly run into it. See ‘The Back Story’ below.) Yes, this is …
Jack Kerouac often wrote about stars. In Dharma Bums he also wrote about tea, among other things, saying that the fifth sip [of tea] was ecstasy, while the third was serenity and the fourth, madness, or fondness—or some variation thereof, I forget which. I contend a great wine can provide …
We live in a shallow culture enamoured with big things, e.g., BIG scores, BIG money, BIG houses…the “McMansions” built with the vulgar, coarse mortar drawn from a pit called Ostentation. And of course, much ado is made about big wines. The “Big Guns”. The “Power-House” reds. The “Mo-Fo” wines… Along …
No wussy sundeck quaffer this. Easily one of the most serious Pinot Gris I have ever encountered in this land. A finely structured wine of precision and ultimately, of distinction. Superbly focused fruit is contoured and well defined by the time spent in wood (9 months I believe it was). …
Gamay. Not necessarily a heavy-weight, at least, not in the New World. Expectations for memorable Gamay bottles tend to run with the bulls in a Pamplona of the mind, somewhere. No glamour-puss grape, this one. But then there’s the Sorrenberg 2011 Gamay. A sunburst of crimson fruit that swiftly settles …
