Page 53 - Blog

My girlfriend and I recently took a long weekend trip to the mountains of Southern PA for an adventure in the Laurel Highlands.  There are some great foodie type restaurants, and it's a nice place to go relax for a few days.  The first night we thought we would cook together and make ourselves a nice meal.  We wanted to just relax over a bottle of 2008 Remoissenet Bourgogne Blanc and decided we would make a stir fry. What a complement the Remoissenet was to the dish!  It brought out the flavors of the squash and zucchini but never blanketed them.  The '08 Remoissenet was less acidic and more rounded than I expected a Bourgogne Blanc to be; it was fabulous! 

The next day, the pooch, my girlfriend and I spent hiking a trail and put a good six miles on our shoes.  The trail was laced with color and beauty and afforded us the opportunity to see some wild blackberries and blueberries growing.  By the time we got back, we were spent and had

It seems that every year summertime just flies by. But the summer of 2011 feels like the shortest ever.

With the snow lasting until April and all the rain this year, it was a short, wet summer. And now it's just about gone for good. The calendar says the Autumnal Equinox is on September 23rd but school has started and the cooler nights are upon us. Life is crazy busy.

One of the pluses to the end of summer (other than the kids being at school all day) is that it's the perfect time for drinking big, red wine again. Now I drink them all year long, especially with steaks on the grill. But it's just not the same when drinking a fine Cabernet, and it's 80 degrees in the shade. The fall is my favorite time for big reds. And lately I've been in a Washington State state of mind!

I recently had two of our best wines from the state of Washington. An incredibly pleasing Cabernet, and of course what they are doing better every year - great Syrah! I've had a handful

This year my wife and I are celebrating our 10th anniversary. Throughout the year, we've been popping some bottles from 2001, a solid vintage for CDPs, Cali Cabs, Sauternes, German Rieslings, and a good portion of Italy. 2001 was also a benchmark vintage for Spain, with Ribera del Duero, Priorat and Rioja at the forefront.  One might even say that the '01 vintage did for Spain what '97 did for Italy.

In the mid-19th century, Marqués de Murrieta was one of first and most influential houses in shaping the future of Rioja wine. Using techniques learned in Bordeaux, in particular the use of oak for aging, these pioneers fashioned wines made primarily from Tempranillo that were built for the long haul.

Today, Marqués de Murrieta produces wines in a modern style under the Dalmau label, as well as traditional with their Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial. The most demanding of Rioja classifications, above Crianza and Reserva, Gran Reserva requires

On a recent trip to the local market, I developed an intense craving for lamb. It's usually my favorite meat to order when dining out. I love to cook, but lamb has proven to be the bane of my cooking existence for as long as I can remember. Rack of lamb? Yea, right. Lamb chops? Where's the meat? I knew that I wanted lamb, but I didn't want the trouble or all that prep. The perfect answer was Lamb Sliders.

I have never made lamb sliders, but I know that I can make one heck of a burger. So I took my burger knowledge and tried to apply it to the lamb as best I could. I knew that I had plenty of seasoning available and with the fresh mint growing in the backyard, I figured I could throw together something pretty tasty.

Before I got into the prep work too far, I decided it was time to select a wine for the night. My go-to wine pairing for lamb is Pinot Noir, so I decided to see how the 2005 Burgundy vintage was doing. I opened a bottle of 2005 Pierre Boisson Auxey Duresses

Local sea scallops are in season on the East end, and we all love a great scallop dish! The inspiration for the dish was a trip I recently took with a local scallop guy who ran a boat called the Tiny Giant. I was really blown away at how hard this guy worked to get me such a pristine product.  I also really respected the fact that he harvested his catch the old fashioned way without damaging the ocean floor.

I wanted to come up with a dish that showcased the sweetness and simplicity of these scallops.  At the time, I had a lot of fresh basil in my garden, as well as some great tomatoes and corn to incorporate into this dish.

(Yield:  4 Entrees)

Basil Oil: 
1 bunch basil 
2 cups grapeseed oil   

-Blanch and shock basil
-Puree in blender with oil
-Let stand overnight and then strain

Sweet

As the weather turns cooler and the leaves begin to fall, red wine season is upon us once again. We delight in this time of year when we can pull a bottle of wine from our cellar and enjoy drinking it next to a roaring fireplace. A few days ago, we did just that. We had the great pleasure of experiencing a bottle of 1972 Heitz Cabernet Sauvignon Martha's Vineyard over a dinner of slow roasted filet mignon surrounded by potatoes and carrots. We are real lovers of old back-vintage Cali, particularly Mondavi and Heitz. Even being in the wine business, it's not every day that we get to experience these special bottles. They are quite the treat.

The irony was that we tried this bottle at almost the same time NY Times wine writer, Eric Asimov, authored an article about the longevity of back-vintage Cali wines and posed the question as to whether new California wines will stand the test of time like their older counterparts. Something he said, struck a chord with us. "Personally,

My girlfriend & I are always looking for fun, new restaurants in NYC to try. A couple weekends ago, it was a rainy, cold Friday night, & we were in the mood for Italian food. My normal search of Google & Yelp wasn't turning up much so I looked to NY Magazine's Critic's Pick section and narrowed our search to the Upper East Side. One restaurant in particular sounded perfect, Nica Trattoria, a quaint Italian restaurant on 84th St. that offered homemade Italian food & whose menu boasted such items as gnocchi & lamb chops. The icing on the cake was that corkage was only $20, so I instantly had a bottle (2006 Montevertine IGT Montevertine) in mind to bring for dinner. I've had the bottle in my wine cooler since December of last year, which it's amazing it lasted that long, but it seemed like a good evening to finally pull the cork.

The main reason I purchased this wine had to do with a Galloni review I read. He used a lot of adjectives that I would normally

You may feel that it's a bit too late in the season for the wines of the Loire Valley, but hear me out. One of the most incredible voyages of my life was a week through paradise in central France. Navigating this place would be nearly impossible if you didn't have friends or family to guide you, so I was lucky enough to travel with a Loire local. Venturing through quaint areas such as Restigne and Angers were just as rewarding as visiting the larger provinces like Sancerre.

I began my tour through the vast Touraine, which is the central most appellation in the Loire. Famous for goat cheese (Chevre de Sante Maure), beautiful sunflower fields and rillettes, or potted meat, this area harvests mostly light bodied reds. As for any American tourists, my first request is to visit at least ONE of the Chateaux de la Loire (c'mon ladies...). Lucky for me, almost every castle had a vineyard on land, so my chaperone was occupied as I pranced around in my own fantasy world. Château

Out on the East End of Long Island, we are fortunate to have incredible fish available to us right off of our shore. I initially started to create this dish in an effort to take advantage of our local striped bass run, but the recipe ended up really being a tribute to local bounty on a larger scale. I decided to use potatoes as the building block for the rest of this dish, which is the vegetable the East End is probably most known for. I then thought of our local clams and knew they would make a nice natural broth for the dish that would go well with the potatoes. Although the chorizo is not a local ingredient, I love the way it goes with the clams, and it added a nice kick to the broth. I then took it a step further and added a little of our local calamari to the dish, and that really put it over the top! The sherry vinegar cut through the richness of the dish and balanced it all out. I'd best describe this dish as very simple, clean and a great one for the fall.

Last Friday evening, we attended the New York Wine Experience held at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, hosted by Wine Spectator. This event is a huge deal in the wine business and is held only once every other year. It's a night when over 250 of the world's top producers gather to showcase their wines that the world knows and loves. In fact, in order for a winery or chateaux to participate, it is requested that the representatives pour a wine rated at least 90 points or higher by Wine Spectator and that the winemaker or owner be present to pour his/her wines. For attendees, this means they have the rare and special opportunity to meet the celebrities of the wine business. And yes, we spotted and chatted with a few of them, including Angelo Gaja, Tim Mondavi, Kathleen Heitz and many others.

It's hard to describe an event so incredible and mind-blowing as this one. You walk down the aisles in awe as the names just jump out at you...Mouton, Margaux, Lafite, Cheval Blanc,