Wine and restaurant reviews
Gabriele and I got back recently from a week in western North Carolina. We rented a cabin about halfway between Boone and Blowing Rock. It was a refreshing break that included a little snow, sightseeing and a lot of good food and wine. An old favorite of ours, Joy Bistro, had closed but we found […]
Last weekend Gabriele and I attended a fun wine-tasting event in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria. Planet Wine set up some tables across the street from their location and poured 30 different wines for a crowd of about 50 on a gorgeous fall day. From the email invite: As always, we’re breaking this thing […]
Recently I had an occasion to celebrate and it made me think of a suitable wine. The kind of wine you spend more on because of the celebration and the experience you expect. My wife and I both like pinot noir so we did a comparison taste test of some well-known makers. Merry Edwards is […]
Earlier this month we took a long weekend in Pittsburgh. Gabriele’s new company is headquartered there and her job is full-time remote. But her boss wanted to bring the department together before the holidays. This was just before the Omicron variant started to dominate the headlines. We had a fun visit to Pittsburgh two years […]
The Rhone wine region in southern France is one of the most famous sources of wine in the world. Rhones wines can often deliver a quality to price ratio that other French regions such as Burgundy and Bordeaux can’t match. This Rhone roundup takes a look at five wines with broad availability in the DC/Virginia/Maryland […]
Silicon Valley bank bank produces an excellent annual report on the U.S. wine industry. With all the industry has been through recently, first fires and then the COVID-19 pandemic, the State of the Wine Industry 2021 report is particularly relevant. 2021 is the 20th anniversary of SVB putting out the report. It’s a deep dive […]
Like (hopefully) most people, our Thanksgiving was smaller and quieter this year. We couldn’t celebrate with the number of family and friends that we typically have in past years due to the pandemic. So to try something different we went with only French wines with the meal. Not that drinking French wine is a radical […]
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended society in the past three weeks. It’s a massive challenge and meeting it requires a level of communal cooperation not seen since WWII. I hope everyone reading this is safe, healthy and thinking about how their actions affect those around them. My wife and I are fortunate we are accustomed […]
Recently we got back from a quick trip to Pittsburgh, PA. Neither of us had ever been before and we were ready for a different scene not too far away. We had also read that there was a flourishing foodie scene in Pittsburgh and decided to see for ourselves. The rumors were well-founded. Pittsburgh today […]
Recently Gabriele and I have had three excellent wines while dining out. Two were Italian, and one was a Bordeaux. We had a nice Barolo while away for a week on vacation in West Virginia. We had dinner at the Press Room restaurant in Shepherdstown – nice place and recommended. (Bistro 112, a French place […]
Last Sunday Gabriele and I attended a tasting featuring Antiquum Farm wines, put on by Grape and Bean in Old Town, Alexandria. Owner and winemaker Stephen Hagen took us through his unique approaches to soil cultivation and winemaking. By chance we just had enjoyed an Antiquum wine a few weeks ago. We had the 2016 […]
One of the most popular wine posts on this site was a story I did five years ago on the demographics of U.S. wine consumption. So it’s past time for me to return to the U.S. wine market and see what’s changed over the past five years. Silicon Valley Bank produces an annual report on […]