Silver Linings Notebook at SF Vintners Market Spring 2013
Today a friend of mine mentioned that after living in California for thirteen years she and her husband are moving back to the Midwest to be closer to family and friends. Whether its going back to one’s birthplace or simply uprooting to greener pastures its tough when some of the very people who Read more
Staying Out of the Friend Zone at Rhone Rangers San Francisco 2013
I’ve often said that selling wine is a lot like speed dating. Wine drinkers have to be choosey because the number of wines they can drink in a lifetime is finite and carries a high cost in doing so, whereas wine producers can make an almost infinite amount of wine at a relatively low cost per unit. This scenario follows what scientists call the Bateman Principle. In the crazy world of wine this all boils Read more
ZAP Zinfandel Festival 2013 Notebook
Ever walk into an ice cream shop and stare at the menu with no idea what flavor to get? You would think that with so many choices it would be easy to find just one flavor of ice cream to satisfy all your hopes and desires on any given day. Well according to Barry Schwartz and his theory Read more
Start a Rebellion With Pink Panda Champagne and Naked Rebel Wines
If Maynard James Keenan and Johnny Knoxville had a love child it would surely resemble Chip Forsythe. With his signature moustache and flowing mullet Chip has returned after a brief stint of sexual healing high atop a mountain in Napa Valley. Too fast to live and too young to die wine’s original bad boy has emerged with a pair of legit offspring of his own and has enlisted Read more
Holiday Shopping at SF Vintners Market Fall 2012
Doesn’t it seem ironic that in a consumer driven society shopping is such a negative experience? Between traffic jams at the Costco checkout and Black Friday chaos I’m surprised businesses are not forced to post signs outside their entrance stating “Surgeon General Warning: Shopping causes strokes and heart disease.”
This brings me to my main point, which is “The Shopping Experience”. It’s no wonder that box stores like Whole Foods are quickly siphoning off retail customers from neighborhood wine shops because most local wine shops do not provide a pleasant shopping experience. Often at these stores the wines are not intuitively Read more
Insta-Awesome Thanksgiving Wines
Thanksgiving is just around the corner, which means many of us in San Francisco will be flying off to exotic destinations like Toledo, Topeka or Tampa in the annual migration that is Thanksgiving.
It’s always expected that us “Californians” will come bearing gifts and wine enthusiasts in particular are often asked to pack a few rare and enchanting bottles that most folks outside of the Golden State only read about in Wine Spectator. Therefore, the following list of wines have been curated Read more
4th Annual Broctacular Open House
Sometimes I feel like wine is becoming the new bug collection. The other night I was listening to a couple of tech nerds spout off about some obscure wine from southern France they had drank at RN74. All I heard was “Chateau Blah Blah/biodynamic/malo-defenestration” something or other. Apparently their start-up just received seed funding which meant at the time they were obligated to flaunt their Baller 2.0 status by rallying the troops and snatch up some top shelf vino at one of the swankiest Read more
Celebrate Bastille Day With Haight Street Market!
What better reason to drink some French wine than to celebrate Bastille Day this July 14th? Don’t know much about French wine? Pas de problème. Haight Street Market has beaucoup vin de France and pulled a coup de grâce by hiring Guillaume FORNEROD as their in-house sommelier.
Guillaume (gee-YOAM) is a geographer by trade who worked as an assistant winemaker before leaving his native France to follow his heart to California. I recently visited Haight Street Market Read more
Taste of Mendocino 2012 Notebook
One of the downsides of living in San Francisco is the lack of opportunity to interact with people over the age of fifty. This realization occurred to me one day while on a stroll down Valencia Street. Peppered with artisanal coffee shops, vintage clothing stores and taquerias this cultural artery Read more
TAPAS 2012 Grand Tasting Notebook
“Really, you’re tired of drinking wine?”
“All the new release parties and wine events…I’ve drank enough sauvignon blanc and zinfandel to drown a beluga whale.”
“Hold on there. I can understand you are tired of drinking the same varietals from the same region. Even I get tired of over-oaked Mondovino, but to swear off wine in general is plain ridiculous.”
This is a conversation you might hear regularly this time of year. Just like when Adam Richman starts to dry heave twelve minutes into an 8 pound burrito the human palate can only take so much of the same flavors before we start to crave a little variety. Thankfully Nature has spared us from what could have been Man vs. Wine.
Oh so many years ago a clever little invention known as cross-pollination tangoed its way into the Tree of Life. For eons it has worked to promote genetic diversity so that Mother Nature can hedge her bets against crop failures that might otherwise have disrupted the food chain. As a result grape vines Read more
