Celebrate Oregon with Regenerative Wines: Brooks Cahiers Pinot Noir, Montinore Italian Red Blend, Troon Amphora Mourvedre

Celebrate Regenerative Oregon Leaders with Brooks Pinot Noir, Montinore Italian Red Blend, Troon Amphora Mourvedre

When you think of Oregon, what comes to mind? Misty mornings along the coast? Snowy Mt Hood and the Cascade Range? Warm inland days with cool nights? Portland’s Powell Books and rugged, green individualism? An ethos of progressive sustainability? Vineyards of Pinot Noir? Oregon is all of this and more contributing to make the wine and the place special. Oregon Wine Month, which concludes today, celebrates it all! Here on Wine Predator, where we focus on sustainability and wine pairings, we have three red wines by three of Oregon’s leaders when it comes to growing grapes and making wine sustainably: pioneers Brooks and Montinore, and now Troon. Three very different red wines from three different parts of Oregon: Continue reading

Happy Mothers’ Day! Celebrate Mothers and Others with Chocolate and Cheese plus Dow’s 10yo and 20yo Tawny Port

Chocolate and Cheese plus Dow’s 10yo and 20yo Tawny Port

Did you know that the original “Mothers’ Day” began as an anti-war movement? Heather Cox Richardson writes that “”Mothers’ Day” with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced writer and reformer Julia Ward Howe that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage. Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change society.”  To achieve that power, she also notes that it produced the movement in the US to get the vote for women.

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For Spring, try Salade Niçoise and this cheeseboard with red or rose wine from Languedoc #Winophiles

Salade Niçoise and this cheeseboard with red or rose wine from Languedoc

What wine region stretches “from the rugged coastline of the Mediterranean Sea to the dramatic peaks of the Pyrenees mountains” and “is one of the largest wine regions in the world” boasting “a breathtaking mosaic of vineyards, olive groves, and medieval villages” that “make it the archetypal Mediterranean wine country?” France’s Languedoc– this month’s Winophiles these with host Martin Redmond Enofylz. He introduces the May theme of Languedoc by saying that the Languedoc’s “diverse terroir, combined with a Mediterranean climate characterized by warm, sunny days and cool breezes, provides the perfect conditions for cultivating a wide range of grape varieties.” But we love it because we love Grenache and the Languedoc also loves Grenache! 

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In Italy May 2024! Wine Travel to Toscana, Sicilia, Campania

The landscape north of Rome is lush and flower filled on the right and views of the ocean and islands  dominate the left. I drove up mostly along the coast a little over an hour, and then headed toward the hills and Saturnia, home of some of the most beautiful hot springs in the world. As a hot springs aficionado I would know– and yet my previous trip here I only had time to ogle them from afar and not soak in them. That will change this trip as I am staying here for longer and with a more relaxed schedule.  

Traveling over multiple time zones is confusing to mind, body, soul, and electronics. Some are more perplexed than others, some sleep like a baby, and others are given super power to just keep going and going and going and going much like the Energizer Bunny (yep I’m in the Energizer Bunny Category — hence this blog post! But then again, fading fast and might just hit publish on some deranged idea or a missive full of typos! ) Continue reading