Appreciation of great wines deepens with positive memories of visiting the place of origin and soaking up the history and culture, the landscapes and most of all, tasting the food and wines at the source.  In a great wine capital like the Napa Valley, with wineries and restaurants lining its straight, flat roads, visiting the region is an easy thing to do.  In the historic city of Porto and the Douro Valley, it hasn’t been quite as convenient to get the full experience; after all, the majority of quintas and …

The Grandi Marchi fine Italian wine tasting in the city earlier this month was a reminder as to why Masi Agricola is one of the Great Houses of Italian wines.  Masi Agricola is not only a high quality producer of one of the three greatest red wines of Italy – Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG – but also leads the region in innovation, research and in a standard of excellence that raises the entire category.
Masi is synonymous with Amarone, the powerful, dry red wine made from dried grapes.  Historically since Roman …

When immigrant Jacob Schram searched the relatively virgin Napa Valley in the early 1860’s to plant vines, he searched for steep hillsides that he knew from his youth growing up near the Rhine River would yield the highest quality grapes.  He found his vineyard site in the foothills south of Calistoga.  The wines of Schramsberg would achieve such renown for their quality that author Robert Louis Stevenson was inspired to declare on the veranda of Schram’s home that “wine is bottled poetry.”  After Jacob Schram’s death in 1905, the estate …

 
Ubuntu Executive Chef Aaron London learned about his James Beard nomination for Rising Star Chef, not from a phone call, but on Twitter – nine simultaneous tweets from friends.  This young 27-year old CIA Hyde Park alumnus already has back-to-back Michelin stars for Ubuntu Restaurant under his belt, and several years working at renowned restaurants in France, Canada and the U.S. including Daniel and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, but he has only just begun.
Ubuntu is a restaurant that focuses on vegetables as a culinary specialty, using …

My motto is “discover the world and savor the classics.”  But when it comes to learning about wine, I believe in starting with the classics, and that applies to wine regions, specific appellations and producers.  With Italian wines, it can be a daunting exercise simply because of the sheer numbers:  Twenty official wine regions, 370 controlled appellations (48 Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita  and 322 Denominazione di Orgine Controllata), about 2,000 grape varieties of which most are indigenous to Italy, and a span of vineyards covering over 1.75 million …

Melbourne has been called the food capital of Australia for its use of seasonal, local foods, ethnically diverse flavors and relaxed ambiance.  Sound like San Francisco?  When the Bay Area was being touted years ago for its innovative use of fresh, artisanal ingredients in California Cuisine, seasoned Melbourne food and wine expert Roy Moorfield said they all just shrugged and said, “what’s the big deal?  We had it all along.”  And he was right.  My friend and I, both cynical food and wine professionals who have worked in San Francisco, …

Often compared to San Francisco without the fog, just halfway through my trip, I realized that San Francisco was really Melbourne with fog.  The southern port city of Melbourne has grown to become Australia’s food and wine capital, drawing on the abundant local produce and seafood, an ethnically diverse population and wine regions that are less than an hour’s drive away.
From the original British settlers in the 1830’s, Melbourne became a haven for immigrants from Europe and the Middle East post WWII, and then Asia in the 1960’s under skilled …

What could make a better first impression of Australian wines than to visit Jasper Hill in Heathcote?  After landing in Melbourne, we hit the ground running, driving due north for a couple of hours on the wrong side of the road until we reached Jasper Hill.
I could tell upon meeting Ron Laughton that his wines would be unique.  A tall, lanky guy, eternally curious, eternally youthful, it’s difficult to absorb the fact that he’s been farming for over 35 years at Heathcote.  He’s someone who fits as naturally at his …

After taking a back seat for decades to the more famous sub-appellations in the Napa Valley, Calistoga is quietly becoming the destination of choice for producers seeking terroir-driven wines in a down-to-earth environment.
Kelly Fleming could have invested anywhere in the Napa Valley for her namesake brand but chose to make Calistoga her home, seeing the potential for high quality winegrowing in Simmons Canyon off Silverado Trail.  The watershed here creates one of the few alluvial fans on the eastern side of the Napa Valley and her location, farther and deeper …

If the greatest wines in the world are made to age using the most expensive production methods, have a long history of quality control and are so recognizable by style that they can only be a single wine from a singular place, then Port is such a wine.
Port is a sweet, fortified wine made since the 17th century from grapes grown in the Douro River Valley in Portugal.  They are aged, traditionally, downriver in the cooler port city of Vila Nova de Gaia across the river from Porto.  In the …