Best Food and Wine Pairing Experiences in Sonoma
White-tablecloth experiences make wine pairing at Sonoma wineries feel less like a bar and more like a restaurant
BiteClub: Category: Wine
Tilted Shed Ciderworks
Micro-cider producers use heirloom apples from the region's lost orchards to create uniquely-flavored hard ciders
K-J taking over Shimo
Jackson Family Wines to open cafe in Healdsburg
Hooker’s House Bourbon
A seriously stiff spirit that only a Hooker could have inspired
Grand Harvest Awards 2011 Announced
International awards announced for wine biz: Plenty of locals
The Costco Report: Organic Beef
I cooked this steak - with a simple red wine-honey reduction and a creamy parmigiano-peppercorn salad - in honor of one of my especially snarky fans, someone who objects strenuously every time I buy something from a supermarket for what I've billed as a "cooking locally" weblog. I'll stipulate the point, but my money says I'm not the only parent in the County who'd like to serve their kids a decent, healthy steak for a few less bucks. But is it a decent, healthy steak?
For the love of pig!
If you like local food and wine, and the idea of watching an entire pig morph from carcass into dinner doesn’t scare you, then you could do worse than a Sunday afternoon spent eating and drinking alongside 5 local winemakers, 5 local chefs, and their 5 porcine victims – all from heritage bloodlines, all sustainably […]
2 Guys, 1 Pool Table, & Some Barrels
As a rule, I wince when I hear the words artisanal and Pinot Noir in the same sentence, conjuring as they do the pretension of restaurants that proclaim “house-made” and people who’ve watched the movie Sideways more than once. But exceptions prove rules, and every so often I’m lucky enough to be reminded of the […]
Lobster Bisque & Viognier @ J Winery: Two of a Perfect Pair
Forgive the hackneyed analog, but I've just eaten a Lennon-McCartney harmony of food and wine over at J Winery; OK, maybe that's too much, but a solid Bee Gees, at least! Seriously, if we wore socks on our teeth, then Chef Mark Caldwell's Lobster Bisque, together with winemaker George Bursick's Hoot Owl Vineyard Viognier, would knock them clean off. And I don't even like Viognier, as a rule.
Eat Pig, Drink Pinot, Save Our Schools
I have mixed feelings about school fund-raisers: On the one hand, like most parents, I have kids in public schools that fall chronically short of financial resources; on the other, I believe that I already pay more than enough in taxes to expect a properly funded system of public education, that the root of the problem is not the quantity of money available, but rather the means by which it is allocated. In any case, on the morning after our Pigs 'n Pinot fund-raising dinner, I am hungover, fat, and happy all the same.