When I started working in the wine business in the summer of 2007 I knew a few things about wine. First it was exponentially better to drink than the Natural Light my contemporaries were imbibing at the time. It provides a great way to meet women and convince them you’re more sophisticated than you actually are. And finally there was something I desired to learn about wine culturally, historically and socially; anyone can order a martini and look good doing so but in the world of wine you are constantly finding out new and interesting things. Yet for all the knowledge I thought I had gathered nothing was more humbling than going to work in a wine store, where the people above you spent most of their lives buying, selling and learning about wine. From my time with them I’ve learned a lot about spotting good wines.

First of all, labels mean absolutely nothing, so when you go to buy wine don’t even look at the front label ignore it, there is more useful information on the back like a good importer. In this era of opulence and visually stimulated purchasing, Louis Vutton and Cadillac, take a more refined and dare I say classier approach. I am reminded of the movie Tommy Boy with the late great Chris Farley. Tommy is selling Callahan Break Pads; one of his retailers says there isn’t a guarantee on Callahan’s box. Tommy says you can put a guarantee on shit and its still shit, same thing with wine - creative picture means the winery spent all the money on a design and not the juice. Like a guarantee vs. the actual product. There can and often will be a cute picture on the bottle but the juice, more times than not, is still absolute Swill (a colloquialism used to describe wine not worth drinking). Read the rest of this entry »

With my stay in Paris coming to an end I decided it was time to revisit old favorites. Relaxing in parks and gardens that took complete control of my senses, walking the streets that I fell in love with, going to that local café or creperie that made me feel at home, and of course drinking the wine that expanded my palate. Taking chances is what wine is about. You won’t know unless you try it once. I can certainly say that there are wines I would be reluctant to try again, but of course I will because who knows, I might have caught it on a bad day. A bad day can happen to even the best wine…

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Caveau is a good escape from Long Street’s chiaroscuro of either uber-pretentious or super-scummy dives… I swear I will never set foot in Miam Miam again but Marvel also grows a little old once you tire of becoming a human bolus being masticated against the gyrating bodies of every tourist and pick-pocket in Cape Town.

Caveau is a breath of fresh air for the city centre, with an urban-rustic feel to it, combining class and elegance with a laid back environment. The design, lay out and mood leave you feeling like you’ve stepped out of Cape Town and discovered a more modern Franschoek. On the three occasions I’ve been there I’ve shared a bottle of their 2004 Spice Route Mourvedre. Accustomed to the Cape’s usual Noble varietals it’s amazing to see how well other cultivars benefit from the Cape’s rich soils. This is a nice big red that has a faint bloody-Maryesque note on the nose. It’s great to see how this Spanish wine has done - bring on Tempranillo!

Like many a webworker - I’m addicted to Podcasts and am pretty much plugged in on a daily basis to the best of APM, NPR, Guardian News Media, Grape Radio etc. Robert Krulwich of NPR did a show the other day about the MIT Bioengineering faculty, and the dawn of a new species under the fostering care of some students with olfactory concerns. You can listen to the show here, but basically the show discusses how for bio-engineering students - life is spent in fume cupboards culturing e-coli in a petri-dishes, and due to the fact that e-coli smells like, er, smells like, well… shit, these students applied their trade to splice out the shit-smelling gene from the e-coli and replace it with the gene from Wintergreen that makes Wintergreen smell like Spearmint resulting in good smelling shit.

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White Zinfandel has certainly ruined many opportunities for rosés in the United States. Slowly they are appearing in restaurants and at wine bars, yet, it is only the brave that are drinking this pink sensation. The rest of us, myself included until recently, don’t want people to believe that we might be drinking White Zinfandel. In reality, the only person that will care, and should care, what you are drinking is you, unless someone else is buying your drink, but that is more geared for the topic of economics, which I won’t be covering here.

I was recently at a wine bar in Paris with friends for dinner. When it came time to order our wine, I was looking at the reds, and by accident I ordered a Cotes-du-Provence thinking it was red. The server came back with our drinks. We had a rainbow of wines sitting on our table, one ordered white, another red, and apparently I ordered a rosé. A bit reluctant at first, I considered sending it back, but quickly remembered the French customer service policy…

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