Posts belonging to Category Burgundy

Some folks hate to make new choices. They order wine like “I’ll have a Chardonnay” or “something red, please.”

The Athletic Directors for UCLA and USC recently made some big choices going all in with their new basketball coaches. Both went for value with important differences. Dan Guerrero of UCLA played the tradition card picking Steve Alford. Pat Haden showed a bit more moxie getting the Sweet 16 Cinderella coach Andy Enfield before he is priced out of SoCal. Coach Enfield barely gets more exposure than his wife Amanda Marcum the former “swimsuit model.” The next three years will feature Steve Alford versus Andy Enfield; two mid-career guys with different pedigrees and lots of history. (more…)

Waikiki is Bourbon Street meets the Vegas Strip. People come to the Hawaiian islands and stay a week or longer in Waikiki. Same crew that buys all their wine from BevMO. Then there are other people who fly right past Oahu on their way to Maui, Kauai or the Big Island and stay in a destination resort. They include those who only buy wines rated 90 points or higher. There is more to wine and more to Oahu [ed. and more to the outer islands; g'head and be obnoxious].

After 5 days of rain and grey skies on the north shore of Kauai – and buying wine in the new Princeville Wine Market – we were ready to wash Hanalei right out of our hair. Fortunately, we had set aside three nights and three and a half days in Honolulu because we like the city and the island. It is much more cosmo than Dancing with the Stars. (more…)

The history of Jerusalem is beyond EPIC. No filmmaker has or will ever capture the full impact [ed. Kingdom of Heaven is decent]. Only a great modern biographer such as Simon Sebag Montefiore can do the story justice; pick up Jerusalem: The Biography.

Jerusalem is not the most ancient city nor is it necessarily the most historic although there would certainly be arguments on that point. It is without doubt the most holy city if for no other reason than three major inter-related religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism – claim Jerusalem as their own but have been forced to share it for millenia. Neither Buddhism nor Hinduism have a Jones for Jerusalem. Think of Buddhism as the Riesling of important religions: alluring with its particular salvational purpose [ed. would you align Hindi with Chianti?]. Which brings me to wine worship. (more…)

Getting lost in wine country is a great way to tour. The next best thing might be getting lost when tasting wines. In fact, this is a tBoW theme loved by fellow tasters including the Krisses, Dotoré, Largnés and the Field Mouse. Is this what happens when one spends too much time on TV shows like Ancient Aliens and Oddities [ed. muted of course]? When we had an opportunity to pull a few corks with the creator of the Mouse rating scheme naturally we turned to the odd wines in our cellars and sale bins. Each wine was unknown to one or both of us. Herkaleez! Herkaleez! Each unusual wine was a winner. (more…)

The 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…)