This is a delightful winter holiday punch with pears, cranberries and Sparkling Wine. You can use Champagne, Prosecco, Cava, Crémant or any other type of bubbles you can find—we especially love all the latest Central Coast Sparkling Wine. If you use a drier sparkler, just use less ginger ale. You can also adjust the amount of …
I once attended Christmas Eve Mass in an old cathedral built in the 1100s in Lausanne Switzerland. What I loved the most about this was the musty, mystical feel of the church filled with villagers in the cold night, the fact that I could understand much of the sermon in French, and the vin chaud …
My favorite summer wine is rosé. Its lovely pink hue and delicate flavor win me over at almost every meal, as it flirts with me from the bottle; I just can’t’ say no to it. It’s as refreshing as a crisp white on a hot day, but slightly big enough with a few tannins and …
I’ve always been a fan of Greek wines. They’re lean, racy, elegant and complex, all at the same time. Greeks still possess a vigorously old-world wine-making mindset and I, for one, am thankful. You won’t find any fruit bombs here, but you’ll find wines that can compete with Bordeaux’s best blends or nuanced whites from Sancerre, France. …
I know it’s not rosé season. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I sit in front of a roaring fire as I write this, but I can’t stop thinking about drinking a frosty glass of Triennes rose. I’m thinking about how its soft melon-colored floral acidity flushed down slow, languid bites of luscious Morbier cheese …
They say local wines, and cocktails, go best with the local food. So what to do when dining at an authentic Greek restaurant in the middle of Santa Barbara county wine country? Go Greek. Petros in Los Olivos is the third of Petros Benekos’ restaurants in southern California, where he serves up high-quality, delicious and …
Monbazillac is really the great foie gras wine. Neighboring Sauternes (you know it, Château d’Yquem from Bordeaux) is usually regarded as holding this position, but Monbazillac is indeed from the same region as the French home of foie gras, the Dordogne. This region is well-known by foie gras lovers — producing 90% of all foie …
Rioja Spain is a red wine heaven full of Tempranillo. This lovely, russet-colored, medium-bodied varietal excels in all renditions here in its homeland of Spain’s oldest wine region. The Spanish have a foolproof way of guaranteeing what the drinker will get in the glass…at least as far as time in the barrel and time in …
