December is upon us and that means it’s bubbly time again—time to break out the Champagne or other sparkling wine to celebrate the season with friends and loved ones. After decades of enjoying sparkling wines and going through various phases, we’ve found that we keep coming back to our old favorites, even though we do experiment from time to time. After all, experimentation is how we find the things that become our old favorites over time. Read on…

This past Wednesday, we caught the Los Angeles installment of the Simply Italian Great Wines U.S. Tour 2016 at the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel. (We had attended their 2013 tour, the last time they swept through Los Angeles.) There were, of course, many very good Italian wines on hand. So many that we could not sample them all. We’ve been to so many thematic wine tastings and, more particularly, so many Italian wine tastings that we decided to approach this event by searching for something new and different—something that would stand out for us. We were not disappointed. Read on…

The Andes mountain range runs for over 4,000 miles up and down the western edge of South America, running through Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. They boast some of the highest mountains in the world outside Asia as well as two particularly stellar wine producing countries, Argentina and Chile, where wine production dates back to the 1500s. Argentina and Chile are long countries that geographically take up most of the southern part of South America, with Chile to the west and Argentina to the east. Argentina is very dry (except sometimes when El Niño Read on…

We’re in the thick of summer and the weather is hot all around. And so, it’s high time to break out some great Rosé wines. Fortunately, back in mid–May, we ventured to the Skybar at Mondrian LA for the La Nuit En Rosé wine tasting organized by Ian Blackburn’s wineLA. There was a huge selection of great Rosé’s on hand to sample at the event, which took place on a warm sunny afternoon, a perfect setting for Rosé tasting! Read on…

On May 25th, we attended the STARS of California Wine tasting event in Beverly Hills, hosted by Ian Blackburn’s wineLA organization. We enjoyed some excellent California wines that day, but our favorite wine of the tasting was the one we tasted first and last that day. Read on…

California Zinfandel dates back to at least the 1800s and, by the end of that century, was the most widely planted varietal in California. The Zin vineyards survived Prohibition by selling grapes for the “home market” and religious ceremonial use. By the 1970s, a Zin production accident resulted in a sweet White Zinfandel wine that became a consumer craze almost overnight. But Zinfandel, whether red or white, lacked critical acclaim as Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay surpassed it in the fine wine category. That landscape has changed more recently, as top Zinfandel winemakers have consistently produced Zinfandel of ever–higher quality, and we were cordially invited to sample some of the greatest of the great ten days ago at the “Elevating Zinfandel” wine tasting event hosted by Ian Blackburn’s wineLA organization at Republique on South La Brea Avenue. Read on…

The third annual Loire Valley wine tasting titled “Spring to Loire”, sponsored by Loire Valley Wines, took place last week at the Smogshoppe. It seemed a bit smaller (in terms of wines poured as well as the number of people in attendance) than last year’s event, but there were many very good wines on hand. Read on…