Drink Eat Love

Monday Night Wine: Family Meal

(Image from Relief Society Presidents)

I'm ready for my close up

Here is a short video from YumTV on Italian sparkling wine. Typepad cuts the screen off a touch so if you want to see me in all my glory click on this link: Beyond Champagne

Know your bubbles

Since my first bottle of Champagne I have been a true believer. I not only believe that wine with bubbles makes everything better, but that Champagne is the only wine I could not live without. As we approach the New Year, I know many of you are going to go out and buy some sparkling wine to bring in the New Year and that is great!

But don't let special occasions be the only reason you pop a bottle of sparkling wine. I keep a minimum of two bottles of sparkling wine in my fridge at all times (at the moment I have six). I don't only keep Champagne but I rotate between various types of sparkling wine: Prosecco, Cava, Franciacorta, Cremant d' Alscace, Burgunday and Jura. I open sparkling wine like one might open a can of Coke...anytime and all the time.

Monday Night Wines: Getting in the groove

If you have been following this blog for a while it is no secret that I LOVE wines from Piedmont, Italy. My love affair began early in my wine career and it is a love that has lasted five moves, four jobs, good vintages and poor vintages, I cannot get enough of this region's food, wine or people. It is good to get the MNW back to you and share what I'm drinking. I do have to warn you that with my new job my wines will be even more skewed to Italian wines but I do buy wine like a boy does baseball cards so don't worry too much!

Getting closer

Thumbs Up - Down Under by Jon Porter

  

My dad, Jon Porter, recently spent a week in New Zealand. I asked him to write about his day trip on Waiheke Island off the coast of Auckland.

Time changes all things, but some things get better over time.  Children grow up, global events can be placed into perspective and wine improves, especially wine producers.  Nearly 30 years ago, I took my first trip down under to what the native Maori’s called Aotearoa, “the land of the long white clouds,” now known as New Zealand.  This incredibly beautiful nation of some 4.2 million people, 40 million sheep and 10 million dairy cattle, is also now famous for its wines.  This was not the case 30 years ago on my first visit.  The only wine worth drinking was something called MacWilliam’s Cabernet, which was overly juicy and tannic, but for the price, not bad.  New Zealand is also the first place I encountered that had wines in a box.  The white wines of the country were overly sweet and best used as paint thinner.

The Big Change

Hawaii-Wine-O

Looking at that sunset for a week made it very difficult to muster up the energy to blog, but I'm back in San Francisco and thought I'd share a few wine memories of our trip to the south side of Maui.

Art and looking for a drink

"Where the Wild Things Are" is a seminal work that since my first viewing as a little boy has always made me smile. The Jewish Contemporary Museum is showing an exhibit titled, "There's a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak" and being fans of Maurice Sendak we decided to go. Neither Shauna or I had been to the museum and had wanted to go for a while. The space was formally a power station for San Francisco and has been re-imagined into a world-class museum by Daniel Libeskind.  It is a large space that has three dedicated rooms for shows,  The Sendak exhibit took me back to my childhood and I did not realize just how many books he either wrote or did the art for, his influence on my life was immense. Not knowing it until yesterday, I owe much to Mr. Sendak, his drawings helped shape my ability to imagine. If you are in San Francisco or at least near it you should take the time to see the exhibit.

Putting it in the right place

Shireen Qudosi is back as a guest writer. I happen to live in San Francisco and have a shared basement which is at a constant and cool temperature. But for those of you that live in hotter climates take heed, if you buy any wine that you are "saving" don't just put it in a cupboard or over the fridge.