In 2023, Wine Predator is visiting South America, starting with Chile. While I’m looking at getting there personally, I’ll certainly be traveling there with my palate, taking on a different aspect of South American wine every month with the World Wine Travel group of wine writers. While our first stop is Chile, we’ll also be visiting Uruguay for red, white, and tannat, Argentina for Malbec and more, and returns to Chile to focus on organic wine in April, coastal wine in June, and Carmenere in November. Not really sure exactly all of the stops on our itinerary or when they’ll take place, but I’m excited to dive in and share the wines and the menus that go with them starting with a range of four Chilean wines with three classic dishes– with recipes for two of them! Continue reading →
Looking to enjoy French wine on a budget? France’s Rhône Valley Wines offer excellent values in reds, whites, and rosés that also provide a diversity of grapes and complex flavor profiles. Crisp and refreshing whites and rosés work well with winter citrus salads, seafood, and chicken. Red blends pair with heartier and richer fair including stews, braised meats like lamb shank, and my favorite, cassoulet Continue reading →
2 Organic Wines from Cantina de Frignano paired with Sicilian style pizza
Tiny Cantina de Frignano in Emilia-Romagna produces around 22k bottles, at most 2k cases a year. While quite small, they grow a wide variety of organic grapes, specializing in a few which grow nowhere else in the world, Continue reading →
An active volcanic island off the toe of the boot of Italy, Sicily is surrounded by the sea.
These two factor into the origin of Sicily’s native grapes, but it’s the combination of island’s location just over a mile from Italy and less than 100 miles from Africa that make the cuisine unique.
I was sick, sick, sick all of fall of 2022. At least that’s what it seemed like. After almost three COVID years of avoiding people and wearing masks, it’s as if this cold and flu season has hit us with a vengeance. There’s even a name for it: “immunity debt.” Honestly, I’m still coughing, which is hard because I am typically a robust, healthy, strong, active, and fit person. Like just about everyone else, I hate being sick. It’s annoying. It’s exhausting. I want to get on with my life.
Worse, when I’m sick, usually wine tastes bad. Coffee too, but that’s not a problem for someone who writes about wine as often as I do.
Does it feel like we’re being surrounded by Top 10 Lists of 2022? And yet, here comes another one! Every year I ask my fellow Wine Predator Sue Hill to tell me her Top 10 wines but she can’t give me her Top 10 Wines she says because the experience of the wine is always so intertwined with the meal. So I asked her to send me her Top 10 Favorite Blog Posts we’ve created in 2022. Continue reading →
Clink different with sparkling wine secrets from around the world
Happy New Year! On New Year’s Eve, more than any other except maybe a wedding day, all minds go to sparkling wine. Sparkling wine is one of my favorite beverages and I drink it all year– and not just on special occasions! So as I’m preparing Top 10 2022 lists from Sue and I, I thought I’d take a look to see what we did with sparkling wine in 2022 and I came up with this Top 10 Sparkling Moments for 2022:
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 