What’s on Your Menu?

There’s something about the end of one year and the beginning of a new one that causes me to pause and reflect.  One of these year-end contemplations is often about my favorite meals of the year.  This time, however, it came in a different form:  what would be on the menu of my last meal?   Here’s my list:

• To kick it off, a Kir Royale…and then an Aperol Spritz (Hey, it’s my last meal so who cares if I over-drink?)

• Next, a Margarita with guacamole, home-made chips & salsa, and a chile relleno (I’m no longer worried about my weight!)

• Then, fresh Dungeness crab…with lots of mayo and hot-from-the-oven sour dough French bread swimming in butter (goodbye cruel cholesterol count!)

• To follow would be pasta with fresh porcini mushrooms & freshly shaved white truffles, served with a well-aged Dal Forno Romano Amarone

• For dessert, I couldn’t leave this earth without having one more warm home-made brownie topped with pralines and cream from Baskin-Robbins (no worries about tomorrow!)

More importantly, however, than what’s on the menu is WHO I would be dining with.  A reminder for all of us:   we need to break-bread together with people we love more often…and bring out those old vintages now.

Happy New Year!

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

It’s that time of the year for contemplation… all of the shoulda, woulda and coulda from the last 12 months.  A year or two ago the Wine Spectator had an article in which the author lamented about his greatest wine regrets.  Here’s my list of wine roads not taken.

     I wish I had known Gruner Veltliner earlier as it’s my latest darling varietal.  Yeah, I know it’s hard to pronounce, but as hard as it is to say, it’s the inverse wonderful to drink.  While I tried it 35 years ago on my first trip to Austria, it never hit home until this year when I had some terrific GV in New Zealand.  Now I can’t get enough of this fruity (think berries, citrus & stone fruits) & floral white dazzler native to Austria.

    I wish I had drunk more wines from Bierzo, Spain.  I’m currently working on the 2016 Wine Knows tour to Spain and Portugal and it reminds me of how much I love these wines.  Made from the Mencia grape, these drop-dead gorgeous, complex reds from Spain’s northwest should be on every wine lover’s radar.  For quality/price ratio, Bierzo’s Mencia knocks it out of the ballpark.

     I wish my last 35 years of serious wine drinking had all been done blindly.  In my ideal world, all wine should be consumed without knowing what it is or how much it costs. Too many of us are persuaded by the brand name, the price, or some other factor that has no relationship (necessarily) to what’s in the bottle.  Taste it blind…then decide if the quality warrants the price.  Taste it blind and you may be very surprised as to what you find.

     I wish Riesling was not such a step-child.  I notice several people avoiding this varietal…probably because of their preconceived ideas of a sweet wine.  The Rieslings I love are bone dry.   True, older Rieslings are often acquired tastes due to their petrol profile, but when correctly paired with food, this varietal is an real unsung hero for most Americans.

What wine roads should you take in 2015?  What’s on your wine bucket list?  What are your New Year’s Resolutions related to wine?

I’ll have what she's having !

That’s my New Year’s resolution... a kind of ‘When Harry met Sally’ credo to be more adventurous.  Let me qualify that…to be more adventurous when choosing wines.  Rather than going with what I know, I’m going to do something wild and crazy!   I’m going to try a varietal I don’t know well, choose a wine region that I haven’t visited, select a winery I’ve never heard of.  Or, if I'm in a restaurant I'll ask the sommelier to surprise me with his or her choice of wine that is drinking exceptionally well at the moment.

May your new year, too, be filled with wild and crazy adventures!

New Year’s Resolutions

Keeping it simple, here's what I'm committing to in 2013: 

·        Taste more wines blind

·        Try more wines I don’t know 

·        Don’t wait too long to drink a special bottle (save the

          bottle but drink the wine!)

·        Remember that more is not necessarily more…gems      

          can be found in all price categories

·        Decide what I think of the wine before I know the price

      Happy New Year!