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 …

My trip to Porto and the Douro Valley in Portugal revealed a lesser-known fact:  that sweet fortified wines can pair with savory foods in new and exciting ways.  Just don’t think about Port as a really “sweet” wine, and don’t always think “red” although most Port wine is made with red grape varieties.
While Port wine is sweet, typically about 100 grams/liter, it can be lower than 40 g/l for a white Port or as low as 80 g/l for ruby and tawny Ports depending on the producer’s house style.  For …

A great way to use a lot of fresh shiso leaves is to make a pesto, Asian style.  I was inspired by traditional pesto but replaced the basil with shiso and the pine nuts with widely-available edamame soy beans.  Asian flavors give the pesto lots of umami.
When shiso grows in abundance during the hot summer and early fall, making something that is cool to eat and fast to make without heat is welcome.  All you need is a stick blender and one container like a glass measuring cup.
For this recipe, …

Zinfandel, like most reds, goes great with BBQ and there was plenty of that at the Good Eats & Zinfandel pairing at Fort Mason on Thursday as part of Zinfandel Advocates and Producers’ 20th anniversary celebration.  But with zinfandel’s softer tannin structure and moderate acidity, there is a broader range of dishes it can be enjoyed with, from spicy hot to vegetarian to soups, even sashimi!  Fifty zinfandel producers teamed up with Bay Area chefs to produce mouthwatering pairings that kept throngs of fans crawling the venue.  Here are some …

HRH Prince Robert of Luxembourg was in Los Angeles Wednesday for the 7th of 8 grand dinners being held around the world celebrating the 75th anniversary of the acquistion of Bordeaux’s first grand cru classe Chateau Haut-Brion by his great grandfather, American investment banker Clarence Dillon.  The lavish dinner held at the Vibiana in downtown Los Angeles was prepared by Chef Thomas Keller of Napa Valley’s French Laundry for an exclusive group of wine lovers, industry tastemakers and the creative elite including Jennifer Aniston, Marg Helgenberger, Quincy Jones and Adrien Brody.
Clarence …

Sake isn’t really wine, it’s a brewed beverage, said Henry Sidel, uber premium sake importer and educator, “you have to take off your wine hat.”  Sidel, President of Joto Sake based in NYC, was in the Bay Area to give a couple of sake presentations at the Culinary Institute of America’s annual Worlds of Flavor event this past weekend.  This afficionado is so meticulous about quality that he only represents eight artisanal producers, who together represent 16 generations and over 1,500 years of production of this ancient Japanese beverage.  Sidel …

Carmenere changes the way I view Chile as a wine region, that is, as a high quality everyday wine producing region.  To be a ‘great’ wine region, producers need to grow and make wines that are so distinctive by grape variety, winemaking and character that if tasted blind, one could say for example, this syrah is from the Northern Rhone.  I couldn’t say that in the past with Chile’s New World style international varietal wines.    But with carmenere, Chile produces a signature wine that outclasses even carmenere’s traditional home, cool climate Bordeaux.  In Chile’s sunny and …

Americans are appreciating Beaujolais more than ever for its fresh, fruit-driven and lower alcohol red wines at an attractive average price of $9.  And consumers are discovering Beaujolais beyond the tutti-frutti “Nouveau” style with basic Beaujolais now representing 49% of U.S. sales vs. 28% for Nouveau.  The remainder are top of line Beaujolais-Villages which sells for around $13 and the Beaujolais Crus averaging $17.  These are tremendous values given the high cost of mandatory hand-harvesting – the only appellation outside of Champagne to require this – and low authorized yields …

How does one pair Madeira with savory foods?  It is a sweet fortified wine that doesn’t appear on the face of it to go well with foods.   What does make it suitable for food is the characteristic high acidity that other fortified wines like Sherry – with its low to moderate acidity - and even Port with its balanced acidity, do not have.  Also, while even “dry” Madeira has some residual sugar, they always finish dry.  Another factor that ties Madeira to a range of interesting cuisines is the range of complex flavors.  While …

Winemaker Emilio Rodriguez of Terras Gauda in Rias Baixas

High expression, or “alta expresion” is a termed used in Rioja for new wave red Rioja, but in the northwest of Spain, winemaker Emilio Rodriguez of Bodegas Terras Gauda seeks ultimate expression of the heirloom whites of Rias Baixas and reds of Bierzo. Combine his wines with the tapas of Gerald Hirigoyen’s Bocadillos Restaurant, and one experiences the authentic flavors of Spain the way they are meant to be.
Rias Baixas is the only exclusively white wine appellation in Spain located in the northwest region …