We may not have been posting the last few months, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been actively furthering our imbibing cause. Hell no! The Wine Imbiber and I have been attending a plethora of events (Rich is just busy just tending to his day job right now—write ups will follow eventually). In the meantime, I recently went to a food blogger event with my daughter, Brynn (formerly known as the college spawn, but now that she’s graduated, working and running her own website, I’ve dropped her much–loved moniker). It was quite the experience for both of us, and much different from all the food & wine events I usually go to with Rich. Don’t get me wrong, food & drink aficionados run rampant at both types of events. And there’s always something to be learned at each as well. This event just had a completely different vibe to it that was very endearing. Not that winos aren’t a lovable lot…this group just has a different agenda. To give you an idea of what I mean, “Food, Inspiration, and Above All, Community” was proudly emblazoned inside the front cover of the event’s brochure. Read on…

How does one start the first post they’ve written in nearly three months? I’m not really sure, since we’ve never gone this long with nary a word. But then again, we’ve never experienced what we’ve just gone through during the last few months. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered firsthand that stress and sorrow have a way of immobilizing a person. I’m someone who has never had to deal much with death on a personal level, and unfortunately, it really sucked the motivation out of me. I have always wondered how I’d be able to deal with human loved ones departing since I’ve done so poorly in the past with the deaths of furry family members. The last few months have proven me to be vulnerable on all counts. Read on…

In Part One of this series, we wrote about some of the wineries in and about the Chehalem Mountains AVA in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Moving south, we next visited the Dundee Hills AVA. We have three great wineries to highlight and a great place for dinner in nearby Dayton to recommend. On this tour, we departed from the approach we took on our previous tour in 2009. Instead of rushing to visit as many wineries as possible, we decided to visit only a few each day, and we tried hard not just to visit our previous favorites. Well, on this day, we visited two old favorites and one new discovery. I said we tried hard—not that we succeeded for the most part. Read on…

This past October we returned to Oregon to get a handle on the latest Pinot Noir offerings from the Willamette Valley. We took our previous tour during the summer in June 2009. This time, we decided to make the trek in the fall, when harvest was in full swing in the vineyards. The forecast was threatening a strong rain storm, so we prepared for the worst. Yet, we were pleasantly surprised that we barely experienced a sprinkle during our three day adventure. In fact, the weather was mostly sunny and warm the entire time. While the prospect of heavy rain had vineyard managers in a panic to pick their grapes as quickly as humanly possible, that fortunately didn’t cause any slow–down of tasting room activity throughout the Valley. Read on…

I’m usually all about from–scratch baking (especially this time of year, when most of my baking efforts end up as gifts). The rest of the year, I appreciate the control of ingredients that homemade baking affords since I try to prepare foods in the healthiest way possible given all the consequences that poor diet choices create. But let’s face it…most holiday indulgences are bad for you from the get–go. All that sugar, saturated fat and alcohol adds up quickly in the calorie department (among other places), and rarely is it recommended as part of a healthy eating regimen. Unless, of course, you’re talking about red wine Read on…

It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. The days of champagne and sparkling wine are upon us, so we attended Tasting Panel Magazine’s annual sparkling wine trade tasting event at Waterloo & City in Culver City, where we sampled about 30 vintage bubblies. We did this for you, so you don’t have to do the heavy lifting. We narrow the field for you. Isn’t that considerate of us?

This particular event was only for vintage (juice of a particular year) brut (pretty dry) Champagne (or sparkling wine, for those candidates not allowed to use the term “Champagne”)—but, for this article, we’ll refer to all of these bubblies as Champagne). Typically, we review and recommend mostly non–vintage Champagnes because they tend (as a general rule) to be Read on…

Argentina is the South American country situated between Chile to its west along the Pacific Coast and Brazil and Uruguay to the east along the Atlantic Coast. It runs further north–south than it does east–west, but is much wider (east–west) than Chile. About halfway down and to the extreme western side of Argentina is the Mendoza province, which is separated from Chile by the Andes Mountains.

While Argentina has several notable winemaking regions, Mendoza is the most well–known and produces by far the largest volume of fine wine in the country. Although the area was conquered by Spain in the 1500s, the viticulture was more broadly European–influenced as the Spanish colonizers brought with them a variety of European grape vines. Read on…