Apertivo with Organic Grillo from Cantine Ermes “Vento di Mare” Sicilia DOC
In Milan at an outdoor cafe on my first trip to Italy in October 2022, we were quite surprised to find spritz was served with snacks, specifically, large green olives and potato chips! I looked around and saw everyone had them and that this is standard. Just like chips and salsa is expected in a Mexican food restaurant in California, so are small bowls with snacks common in Italy when you order a spritz, sparkling, or white wine in the afternoon during what we might think of as “happy hour” — that time in the day when lunch has worn off and it is too early for dinner, especially in Italy where it is more common to eat after dark and in the cool of the evening around 830 or 9pm.
People watching with spritz and snacks in Milan, October 2022; potato chips are common in the north while taralli are more popular for apertivo in the south
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 →
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.
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 →
The Final Friday in April is Viognier Day (vee-ON-yay and vee-OWN-yay). DNA profiling at University of California, Davis in 2004 revealed viognier, a white grape, as closely related to two Italian red grapes: Freisa, and a genetic cousin of Nebbiolo. No wonder it has such attractive aromas!
Like Tannat finding a home in Uruguay from Europe, Malbec is another transplant from France to South America that is doing exceptionally well there. On April 17 in 1853, Argentina’s wine industry transformed when French soil expert Michel Aimé Pouget showed Argentineans how to adapt French varietals, including Malbec, to Argentina. Wines of Argentina created Malbec World Day on April 17 to celebrate Malbec from Argentina and “to position Argentine Malbec as one of the most prominent in the world.” Every April 17th, and throughout the month of April, look for different activities around the globe about Argentinean Malbec.
Wine has been made in Argentina since the 1500s, and today Argentina is one of the top five producing wine countries in the world. Continue reading →
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 