Posts belonging to Category Southern Italy

The weather has been fussier than a sommelier looking at a bottle of Two Buck Chuck a customer brought in. 90 degrees this week; 60 the next. Perfect Spring weather in the mid-70s last week then drizzling today. Late Spring should be when you put together Ros√©s and bright acidic fun White wines for the long hot summer haul just around the corner. But no. Make the most of every day. This is the perfect time to clear out the wine reviews that have not been transferred to the blogosphere. The odd lot wines for an odd lot late Spring include some pink wines from late last summer to get us all in the mood. (more…)

Airport wine bar – it just sounds so desperate. Hardly. The help was knowledgeable and the wines were carefully, intelligently selected, and I could construct my own flight cherry picking from the ten flights offered. And the price was right. If I did not want a flight I could pick my wines and pour size from the well represented list. In short, they pretty much covered all the bases.
Next time you are in the Sacramento airport check out Vino Volo, a wine bar….in the airport. This brilliant idea belongs to Doug Tomlinson, a financial guy who enjoys wine and apparently spent a lot of time in airports wishing he could be tasting wine instead of poring over paperbacks or looking at boring golf shirts in the PGA store. He was also thinking up clever corporate names like Taste Inc. which is the parent company of VV. Voila Vino Volo which translates (cleverly) from Italian to English as wine flight. Currently, in addition to Sacramento, there are airport Vino Volos grounded in Seattle, Oakland, Detroit, San Antonio, Newark, JFK NYC, Philly, and DC. (more…)

Fall in LA is the best time of year. Fall in LA means it is safe to go outside without fearing a microwave burn. The tarantulas and rattlesnakes have left the patio to the hounds. [ed. real-Yankee Derek Jeter likes to have a little Halloween fun this time of year] I can watch TV outside into the early evening.
Fall means baseball playoffs and a chance to see the current future ex-Yankees: among the star players an ex-Red Sox, ex-Angel and ex-Twin. The once September, then October, Classic now ends in November. Yo. The Yanks and Phils are worth watching long as the “tri-state area” don’t get an early snowfall no-what-i-mean? October is also the middle of the Pac 9 season. UCLA football is the nucelar winter of local sports teams and USC, having already lost its annual sucker game, can win the conference and go clobber Cincinnatti or Iowa in the Rose Bowl. (more…)