January 2008
Posted: Jan 30, 2008 4:06pm ET
I just finished an amazing tasting with the senior editors of the magazine and owner/publisher Marvin Shanken. We tasted old California reds from the 1960s and 1970s in a secret hideway during editoral planning meetings for the magazine.
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Posted: Jan 28, 2008 4:00pm ET
I had dinner in Florida on Saturday night in Coral Gables at a friend’s house and he laid out a fabulous dinner with excellent food and stunning wines. There’s nothing better than being from out of town and being made to feel like being part of the family.
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Posted: Jan 25, 2008 2:18pm ET
After the UGC tasting in Santa Monica , I went to a dinner and tasting for Les Carmes Haut-Brion at a trendy restaurant called Adobe, put on by Steve Winfield of LiquidLink, an LA –based wine importer.
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Posted: Jan 22, 2008 1:29pm ET
I went to the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux tasting on Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. And I was excited to see how the 2005 Bordeaux would be showing a month after I t asted them in Bordeaux in December for a massive report in the magazine.
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Posted: Jan 18, 2008 1:35pm ET
I had a fun dinner last night at Craft in Century City with Gordon Trachtenberg, who is the guy who won the competition last week in my blog for a dinner with me. I like Craft for its New York chic décor and precise, well-made food.
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Posted: Jan 17, 2008 6:15pm ET
Is it only me, or does anyone else get ripped off late at night in bars? I pulled in with a friend of mine last night to the bar at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills after a fabulous dinner at Il Grano in West Los Angeles for a late-night glass of Champagne, and we got totally fleeced.
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Posted: Jan 16, 2008 2:28pm ET
I hosted a dinner in Bordeaux before Christmas at the hotel Les Sources de Caudalie , for the winemakers of four of the five first growths, as well as Alain Vautier of Ausone , which in effect is a first growth.
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Posted: Jan 15, 2008 12:31pm ET
Did any of you hear or read the story about a California Institute of Technology "study" that proved that people are influenced by the price when assessing the quality of a wine? In other words, the majority of the 21 people in the test preferred the expensive wine.
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Posted: Jan 14, 2008 5:36pm ET
I had lunch on Saturday with a friend from Los Angeles and a couple of his wine collector buddies in Santa Monica at a restaurant called Locanda Portofino. It was good, simple Italian food—things like soft and creamy burrata cheese with Parma ham or a short pasta with squid in a spicy tomato sauce.
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Posted: Jan 10, 2008 4:44pm ET
“That’s the last bottle,” said the owner of the restaurant. Those words are like great rock n’ roll to my ears, when I score a great bottle for a great price in a restaurant. It’s happened many times in my career.
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Posted: Jan 9, 2008 3:05pm ET
Went to a wine bar in Pasadena, Calif., last night with some friends. Something annoying happened. Some might find it amusing, but I think it’s not cool. And it gives sommeliers a bad name. Moreover, I would have thought more of the service at Vertical , which is a wine bar and restaurant located one story above street level.
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Posted: Jan 7, 2008 2:42pm ET
Sometimes it’s better not to know the value of a wine. Otherwise, you may never drink it, or you might sell it instead. It’s meant for drinking. I was thinking of this yesterday during a lunch in Los Angeles with some friends, Michael Frey and his lovely wife Catherine Bloom Frey.
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Posted: Jan 3, 2008 3:23pm ET
It was a full circle on December 31. Just like 2006, I spent my New Year’s Eve at Fleming's Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar in Rancho Mirage, Calif., with my 13-year-old son, Jack, and my 9-year-old daughter, Isabel, and my mother and stepfather.
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