So you thought I was done. You thought that you’d gotten away with only a single Thanksgiving piece from this running newsletter. Well you were wrong. There’s more. Last week I offered guidelines, with one or two specifics, this week I’ll offer what’s on my personal short list of what to bring. The trouble with…

You knew this was coming. It never fails. Every year around this time every newspaper, food and wine magazine, podcast, radio cooking show, newsletter, and town crier have recommendations for what wine to drink at Thanksgiving. Well, I’m no different. Low hanging fruit though it may be, it is certainly something worth talking about. As…

Last week we hosted Tom Mortimer from Oregon’s Le Cadeau Vineyards for a wine tasting, as we do from time to time. I remember the first time that I tasted Tom’s wines was probably around 2011 or 2012, and at the time his winery was relatively young, as were the vines he had planted on…

Dew the Twist On more than one occasion I’ve gone to recommend a wine of quality, and found resistance because the wine was sealed into the bottle with a (gasp!) screw cap. Now, to be fair, I understand why one might be resistant to a bottle of wine enclosed with the same technology used for…

What’s in a Name? Italian wines are notoriously cryptic, even to the initiated wine professional. Looking at a label it can be hard to know who the producer is, where the wine comes from, whether you’re looking at the name of the winery, the name of the wine, the name of the grape, or the…

A Breath of Fresh Air If you read enough wine magazines, or dine out at slightly finer establishments than the ol’ Macaroni Garden eventually you’ll see someone decanting wine. Picture a well styled gentleman with a perpetual five o’clock shadow in a silk shirt and a scarf, slowly pouring an ancient red into a decanter,…

Terroir Part 2 Terroir is one of those terms that is crucial to the world of fine wines, but most people in the world will probably go their whole life without using the word. The basic idea of terroir is that distinct vineyards create what’s known as a “sense of place,” with wine grapes being…