A fair restaurant corkage fee is:
20% of the second lowest priced bottle on the restaurant's list.
A tell-tale sign of a wine snob is:
Talking above their dinner companions when it comes to the wine. Nobody wants to feel dumb or unsophisticated when trying to enjoy an evening out.
The wine region I most want to visit:
My "wish list" of wines I want to acquire soon:
Everything Loren Sonkin recommends. :)
My biggest wine pet peeve:
Super high alcohol wines. High alcohol wines don't allow me time to enjoy the wine before I start to feel drunk. I also don't like when a restaurant has a wine list but doesn't care enough to serve the wine in nice stemware. To me, it's akin to serving a beer in a coffee cup. Yes it's still beer but it takes away from the enjoyment a little bit.
My dream wine to one day taste or own:
Old vintage ports. Really any good wine that's been aged as it is so rare to get the chance at them.
The best wines I have ever tasted:
My favorite is Chateau Musar. Freeman Pinot Noir. La Follette Pinot Noir (and believe it or not, his chardonnay. I typically hate chardonnay).
The people with whom I most often enjoy wine:
Karen, Sian, Gez, Karl, Deb, & Kent. Though I drink most of the wine.
The last wine I had that I absolutely loved:
Bibich Reserva 2007. A Croatian red blend that was so good we ordered a second bottle.
What I think of the movie Sideways:
Not Oscar worthy but certainly stoked the fire for US wine sales.
My thoughts on the 100 point rating scale made famous by Robert Parker and emulated by seemingly everyone:
It's unfortunate that one man's palate has so much influence over the options consumers have in their local wine store or supermarket. Just because one person likes a certain type of wine doesn't mean everyone will, or even should. His influence has rapidly distorted the US wine market as sales and marketing are too often based on the "Parker score". Meanwhile many superb wines go unnoticed. I wish Parker would lead the charge in organizing and classifying wines by more than varietal, region, and vintage. If he could lead the wine industry in classifying wine also by style and price, then "scoring" it relative to comparable wines would actually give consumers meaningful info to help them identify wines they want to try. Instead, people just blindly grab a "90" without any context. Mr. Parker, if you ever read this, I think you could have an even bigger impact on the wine industry if you were to reinvent your scoring system.
My wine travels have taken me to the following wine regions:
Douro Valley, Mendoza, Napa, Sonoma
Comments
Natural wine tasting Tuesday oct 18th at Terroir SF and 20th at Lou in LA.
See details here: www.metropoliswinewest.com