Above: the inimitable Ceri Smith, owner and creator of Biondivino, named San Francisco’s “best wine shop” by the San Francisco Gate the very day I visited her, and Chris Terrell, importer of intriguing Georgian wines. When I was in San Francisco last week, I had the great pleasure to meet Ceri Smith, owner and creator […]
Above: a Russian tank in Prague in 1968 (photo by Josef Koudelka). Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that French President Nicolas Sarkozy managed to convince the Russians to withdraw their tanks from Georgia. This morning, the title of the top story is “Russia, Pledging to Leave Georgia, Tightens Its Grip.” This week’s […]
As I stuffed myself silly a few weeks ago at my friend Jeff Berlin’s new Georgian restaurant in Sebastopol, California, I couldn’t help but remember a restaurant that opened in 1998 in New York called Bondì. At the time, faux “northern Italian” cuisine was still the benchmark for fine Italian cookery in the U.S. The […]
Please consider giving to Unicef’s Ukraine child refugee fund. This link takes you straight to the donation page. G-d bless our Ukrainian sisters and brothers. Thank you. The sun shone through the trees on an unusually warm Sonoma valley early evening as kids played in the park and tourists milled about the shops and tasting […]
Last week, after attending the Slow Wine panel tastings in Willamette Valley and San Francisco (where me and the other editors taste the prize-nominated wines), I spent an evening wine bar hopping in Oakland — the hippest place in America imho to drink groovy wine. Well, I really didn’t “hop” that much. As soon as I […]
Above: the Rocche del Gatto Pigato blew me away with its freshness and rich minerality. It was such a stunning pairing for the takeout Vietnamese that Ceri treated us all to on Wednesday night. This wine was a lovely discovery for me. It’s hard to describe the emotion that I experience when I visit Ceri […]
Thank goodness for the amazing Ceri Smith (above), owner of one of my favorite wine shops in the world, Biondivino in San Francisco, and soon-to-be proprietor of Et Al., a “wine salon” around the corner from her (literally) wonderful store. Goodness because her wines are so thoughtfully chosen and reflect an aesthetic that so many […]
Posting in a hurry this morning as I head out from the Upper West Side to yet another meeting and another tasting. But wanted to share this glass of Our Wine 2010 Rkatsiteli (Georgia) that I had as an aperitif yesterday early evening at one of my favorite wine bars in the city, Anfora (conceived […]
Do Bianchi 