Posts belonging to Category Barbera



Transcendental Tasting: the BEST of Yuummmm….

G-Rinaldi-in-vyrdWEB-4The 2012 Holiday Season has been full of highlights with plenty of curiosities to keep the mind working while melting. The easy part of the game is to taste interesting wines and avoid p-l-o-n-k. The harder part is to find value in the most interesting wines. However, the BEST part of knowing and drinking wine is finding a transcendental experience in a wine bottle. This event is rare and almost always unpredictable. We can make a good guess when it might happen but we never really know until well into the wine. At that point we just let it happen. Time slows to a crawl as we become enveloped in a meditative state of harmony and wonder. (more…)

BEST of Camarillo and 3 Old Friends

What the heck is going on in Camarillo? When we attend a wine festival, especially in Camarillo, we expect to taste and munch and meet and greet. We are not supposed to discover wines and new labels. The 2012 Taste of Camarillo provided the right concoction of need-sonar-to-find-em wineries [ed. now THAT is under-the-radar], go-for-it winemaking spirit, and excellent food to see something vinous is happening in the breadbasket of SoCal. (more…)

Wines to Drink when July 4th falls Midweek

July 4th on a Wednesday is like a midweek Saturday. We watched as much baseball as we could tolerate, hacked around on the Internet during the day, and tasted wine in the evening. Without enough time to travel someplace but enough to dream about trips we want to take…we chose to do nuttin…like preparing this post and looking for just the right photos of Scarlett Johansson. Just wait. (more…)

Turkey Day Preview: How to Taste Wine

Hopefully you will be able to read this in time for the big meal Thursday. We are going to reveal the secrets of tasting wine so you can be the brain bully and sound like a real snob. You know casual like but intelligent. It’s easy if you stick to these few pointers. Don’t get too excited.

please exercise moderation

You won’t be like a “somm” but you will take on the trappings of a pretty dope snob. Like tBow and Dotoré. Even IGTY practices these techniques and now he’s a snob too. (more…)

Minutes from the Wine Bored: Is It Just Me?

All of a sudden I am totally bored with wine. All I think about when it comes to wine is how I do not want to think about it at all. I still like drinking wine. I am just out of gas when it comes to describing the experience or even caring about it.

Maybe it is because we are at the end of a summer that hardly got started. Maybe it is because I have decided to drink less for health reasons. Before I get an email about the French Paradox let me make my position clear right now…who cares. Wait…it gets worse. (more…)