January 2009
Posted: Jan 30, 2009 8:57am ET
This is sort of a mundane subject, but I have secretly always wanted a big, bad-ass wine storage unit. I always wanted to have a giant wine locker in my dining room or living room that would show that I was a serious wine collector.
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Posted: Jan 29, 2009 3:20pm ET
I took my 10-year-old daughter, Isabel, to dinner the other evening after her choir practice in York—not New York, but old York, in England. She was bright and lovely as always. We went to a local Italian restaurant called Strada and enjoyed a good meal of pizza and grilled salmon.
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Posted: Jan 26, 2009 11:28am ET
I broke the neck of a bottle of 1960 Croft this weekend before leaving for a dinner with friends in Tuscany. I was in a rush and I ran down to the cellar and grabbed a dark bottle of Vintage Port. It was leaking a little and it had a less than perfect level in the bottle—upper shoulder, or just below where the neck and the shoulder of the bottle meet.
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Posted: Jan 22, 2009 11:22am ET
I made it home from Geneva in my car. I feel like sleeping in my car because my heating doesn’t work very well in my house! That’s Italy! I better light some fires in the fireplaces. I keep thinking about the amazing thing I drank the night of the inauguration.
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Posted: Jan 20, 2009 7:44am ET
I am in Geneva today at a watch show for our sister publication, Cigar Aficionado , but I would much rather be in America with all of you to celebrate the new presidency. I have lived out of the United States for more than 23 years, and I don’t think I have ever felt more proud to be American than today.
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Posted: Jan 11, 2009 12:31pm ET
Here's my tasting note for a 1988 Sassicaia consumed on Oct. 30, 2008, at Cibreo Restaurant, in Florence, Italy, during a vertical tasting covering the commercial history of the famous Tuscan estate: 1988 Tenuta San Guido Sassicaia: Very rich and powerful with layers of berries, spices and ripe plums.
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Posted: Jan 8, 2009 6:21pm ET
Am I missing something? Why are restaurants recommending big, jammy, alcoholic, monster reds to go with fresh, refined and beautiful cuisine? Maybe this is only a problem in Los Angeles, but it’s really dumb and they are not doing a favor to any of us who love wine and food, especially when we are spending a lot of money in a restaurant.
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Posted: Jan 7, 2009 4:29pm ET
I drank a flawed wine last night and I liked it. Or at least I liked it for a while. I have to be honest. Sometimes flawed wines can make you happy, for at least a brief moment. I ordered a glass of the 2006 Scholium Project Babylon Tenbrik Vineyard Petite Sirah at Palate in Glendale, Calif.
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Posted: Jan 5, 2009 11:58am ET
As you may know from reading my recent posts, I have been in Southern California for the last week with my two children to visit their grandparents. I surprisingly have done a lot of cooking. It has been out of survival, for the most part, because my mother is not a very good cook, though she has other good qualities.
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