Wine and restaurant reviews
Calvert Woodley Wine and Spirits is an institution in Washington D.C., with a history dating back to 1949. Every fall the store publishes a wine catalog chock full of great values and lots of information about all kinds of wine. Click here to download your copy. For a long time I despaired of finding good […]
Recently I’ve enjoyed three new red wines. One was a Bordeaux that continues the theme of 2009 as a great value year for Bordeaux. One was a California Cabernet Sauvignon that was pleasantly atypical, and the other was an excellent California Pinot Noir. I wrote last year about 2009 petit chateaux Bordeaux wines and how […]
WashingtonExec published my latest Wine and Dine column today. I talk about the common bias against hotel restaurants, and how that shouldn’t dictate your dining decisions. Case in point are two excellent meals we had recently at Jackson 2o and Morrison House Grille, two properties in Old Town Alexandria managed by the Kimpton hotel chain. […]
This week I saw an article in Decanter via Nick Stephens’ Bordeaux Undiscovered site. The story combined two things I write about here – wine and new generic top level domains, or gTLDs. I last reported on gTLDs back in March — their rollout has been repeatedly delayed. Partly this is due to the kind […]
I last wrote about Italian wine for my April WashingtonExec column. Since then I’ve enjoyed some new Italian red winners that I talk about below. I wrote in April about how Italian wine can be hard to decipher. I hope the deconstructed label above is helpful next time you’re deciding on bringing an Italian wine […]
This February I wrote a piece that looked at wine purchases in 2012 by age group. Last week Gallup came out with some new numbers on U.S. wine consumption. As is often the case with surveys, any conclusions depend on which numbers you choose to highlight. For the most part the trend is very positive. […]
How do you get good value from the wine you buy? It’s a very natural question that many people have asked me. It’s also a very subjective question with no hard and fast answer. That said, the popularity of wine continues to increase, and so does the number of choices available to consumers. So despite […]
Today WashingtonExec published my latest Wine and Dine column. Last month the Washington Post jumped into the wine business with a new wine club offering. The combination was intriguing, but it wasn’t immediately clear to me why the Post launched this business. So I reached out to a media contact for more information. In my […]
As readers of this site know, I don’t think you need to pay a lot for a good wine experience. The definition of “a lot” can differ of course. My definition of that term translates into spending $20-30 to get a very nice bottle of wine sufficient for most occasions. However, there are times when […]
Gabriele and I are just back from a very relaxing Memorial week off in Charleston, South Carolina. We did all the touristy things like museums, Fort Sumpter and the U.S.S. Yorktown. We also enjoyed some fine Southern cuisine and some new wines. By far the best dining experience was at McCrady’s, an award winning restaurant […]
My latest wine column published in WashingtonExec yesterday. I look at American Pinot Noir and how over the past decade a bigger style of the varietal has become popular. A thank you to Jeff Stewart, winemaker at Hartford Court Winery for generously sharing his time and knowledge. I met up with Jeff at a recent […]
My latest Wine and Dine column published today in WashingtonExec. I take a shot at deciphering Italian wine by explaining Italian classifications. The piece also shares my review of some good Tuscan wine sampled at a Grape and Bean tasting event in Alexandria this past weekend. In the piece I share my notes on two […]