Ah Ha! A Newbie’s Wine List or: How I Managed to Post Twice in One Day
In March of this year, Josh Galliano and I dined at the Niche bar together. Throughout our meal customers of Niche, who were also customers of Monarch’s, regularly came up to say hello. To my great fortune, a particularly generous customer added to his hello a bottle of 2004 Williams Selyem Westside Road Neighbors Pinot Noir and with that, my Ah Ha wine moment had happened, and a new chapter of my life began. Thanks Jeff L.
Certainly I’d had good wine before, and I definitely preferred it as my libation of choice with a meal. Outside of restaurants, however, I’d been primarily a beer drinker because I could not only wrap my head around beer, I could afford it. I had no idea what Williams Selyem was that night and, if the wallop of flavor were any indicator, I was pretty damn sure it was a winery producing a product well outside my price range. Arriving home and doing a bit of googling, however, I found a bottle at Brown Derby, in Springfield, MO, for $55. While I realize that’s not cheap by any means, it was significantly less than I’d anticipated, and I immediately purchased it and two other bottles of Williams Selyem Zinfandel to tuck away into my cellar (AKA the cool/dark corner of my basement).
The slippery slope of oenophilia had landed and, where once I was a guy that simply knew he liked wine more than beer but felt he couldn’t afford it, I quickly became a guy that reads a dozen wine blogs a day and voraciously clamors for information. Which brings us, windingly, to my poorly written point: One of those posts was written by Stephen Schenkenberg on stlmag.com about his favorite wine books and websites. It’s a good list but, as a newcomer to this world of wine, I thought I’d offer up a newbie’s perspective (which you can read here in it’s shiny-new polite form, or as an stlmag comment in it’s original, several glasses in, grammatically incorrect–but possibly more entertaining–form)
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Tags: blog, books, cellartracker.com, drvino.com, erobertparker.com, Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson, Jay Miller, Josh Galliano, Kevin Zraly, Mark Oldman, Niche, Robert Parker, Tom Stevenson, Tyler Colman, vinography.com, websites, Williams Selyem, winespectator.com
Event: Farmers’ Dinner at Atlas, August 31
Aug 6, 2009 St. Louis, farming, menus, missouri, restaurants, sustainable agriculture, wine
If you’re not already signed up for the August 31 Iron Chef Battle Royale at Kitchen Conservatory where my friend (or is that soon to be former friend?) Chuck Friedhoff and I pit ourselves against the ass-trouncing duo of Monarch’s Josh Galliano and Sidney Street Cafe’s Kevin Nashan, you should consider heading on over to Atlas where owners Michael Roberts and Jean Donnelly will once again host their annual Farmers’ Dinner (which I sadly keep missing every year).
Though it is subject to change, the menu is after the jump.
Tags: Atlas Restaurant, Wine Dinner
Event: Riedel Tasting June 25
Jun 6, 2009 St. Louis, missouri, wine
If you like wine, you know Riedel as the stemware manufacturer that originated the idea that different beverages should be served in different glasses to enhance the characteristics of each. Whether you’re skeptical about the need for such glasses, or thoroughly convinced, you also know they’re beautiful, expensive glasses.
That makes the June 25 Riedel tasting event at The Wine & Cheese Place all the more enticing as you’ll not only get to sample four wines in four pieces of their Vinum XL stemware to see if there’s truly a difference first hand, you’ll get to take those babies home. As the class is just $50, that’s like getting a $70 discount.
Full details and sign up info can be found at The Wine & Cheese Place’s blog, but the glasses are the Riedel Vinum XL Sauvignon Blanc, Montrachet, Pinot Noir, and Cabernet.
Tags: Riedel, stemware, The Wine & Cheese Place
33 Wine Bar is Officially Sold, Finally
Jan 27, 2009 St. Louis, beer, missouri, restaurants, wine
Here it is, the day the rumors have subsided, the news is finally official, and I’m late to the game. Thing is, I have this thing called a day job. Courtesy of stlbites.com forum regular Wine Lover, however, the whole website wasn’t without the news that 33 Wine Bar sold thanks to his post congratulating new owner, Jeff Stettner.
For those of you interested in learning more, the full letter in which former owner Jack Hafner broke the news to his customers can be found in Wine Lover’s post.
Tags: 33 Wine Bar, Jake Hafner, Jeff Stettner
Interesting News
This doesn’t look like much, but that doesn’t make it any less unusual.
Mount Pleasant Winery’s farmers plant the final rows of Pinot Noir at Campo de los Vientos.
And here’s the full press release:
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Tags: Mount Pleasant Winery, Pinot Noir
From the mountains of Panama and Ethiopia, to the urban-jungles of Portland and Chicago, journalist Michaele Weissman takes us behind the scenes for a look at the world of third-wave specialty coffee. How did we get to Starbucks, and where we go from here?