I have just seen the coolest thing in the wine world. It’s a game changer. I have to tell you I’ve seen the future of wine. The Coravin “wine access” system is going to change how wine is served and consumed in restaurants, wine tasting rooms and at home. Wine’s biggest enemy is oxygen. Once you open a bottle, air gets into the bottle and starts to oxidize it, no matter how much air you try to pump out or displace by squirting inert gas into the bottle then stoppering it. After day two, most wines loose their freshness, and by day three or four forget it. This is a major issue for restaurants and wine bars serving by the glass, and it impacts you, the wine drinker. When was the bottle opened? Hopefully within the past hour, not a day or two ago. How long do most restaurants and…
The Master Perfumer – Roja Dove
It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Any perfumista worth his or her Chanel No. 5 certainly knows the name Roja Dove. I knew it from the books I have written by him, as he is known as the world’s foremost authority on perfumery. I had the good fortune of being able to attend the Sniffapalooza Spring Fling in May of this year, where Roja flew in from London to make a personal appearance and launch his new fragrance line at Bergdorf Goodman. I had the even greater fortune of getting to interview him one on one. Now mind you Roja is not what you’d call a celebrity or rock star perfumer. I think he’d shudder at the suggestion of that. No other living perfumer has the prestigious title of “Professeur des Parfums,” which Roja earned six years into his fragrance career at the House of Guerlain, where…
Dress to the Vines!
It’s a weekend of wine country fashion! Join me at Jessup Cellars in the heart of Napa Valley for Dress to the Vines, a four-day celebration of fashion, wine and perfume. I’ll be doing perfume pairings with Jessup wines and Sonoma Scent Studio fragrances. We’ll dish on the latest wine country style and talk about how Napa Valley influences fashion with industry insiders, magazine editors and stylists. If you are a wine fashionista like me, you won’t want to miss this ground-breaking event that puts style on par with wine, food and art in wine country. On Thursday night, August 15, I’ll be part of a panel talking all things fashion and wine country. To kick off the event, I’m pairing three Jessup Cellars wines with perfumes from wine country based Sonoma Scent Studio that will highlight different aromatic notes in the wines. While wine and perfume together are usually…
Chardonnay in Balance
Chardonnay has been one of the hallmark wines made in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In the 1990’s and early aughts, while other California wineries were pushing the envelope on overblown buttery and oaky styles, Santa Cruz Mountain Chards, especially those of Mount Eden Vineyards and winemaker Jeffrey Patterson, were a beacon of hope for those of us who prefer a more restrained, more balanced glass of wine. Now that the pendulum seems to be swinging towards unoaked, crisp and elegant wines, more Burgundian than Californian in style, these Chardonnays are more fashionable than ever. I’ve never been a Chardonnay fan – until now. I’ve been exploring Santa Cruz Mountains wineries over the past six months or so — getting updated on what’s new and exciting. In the process I’ve discovered some Chardonnays that turned my tastebuds. And while I usually don’t buy Chardonnay, I’ve been spending perhaps a little too…
A Fragrant Tour of NYC With at Sniffapalooza Spring Fling 2013
At 8 am on a Saturday morning in early May, a buzz builds in the beauty basement at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. Voices are at a fever pitch and the excitement is palpable. It’s as if a rock star or an A-list celeb would appear at any moment. Inside Bergdorf’s small cafe 140 people (including me) are waiting in anticipation for the start of something called Sniffapalooza Spring Fling. “It’s the most incredible, intense experience,” says Tamara, who flew in from Arizona. “You’ve gotten on trains, planes and automobiles,” says Karen Dubin, Sniffapalooza’s founder. “This is our 18th event,” she says in regards to this year’s Spring Fling. Twice a year, in the spring and the fall, fragrance fanatics invade the Big Apple, eager to sniff the newest scents from the biggest names in perfumery. Sniffapalooza is a phenomenon, attracting people from far flung locales such as Australia, Paris,…
Wine Country Chic, Napa Valley Style
When the invitation says “wine country casual,” what does that mean? That’s what attendees of this year’s Auction Napa Valley, on the first weekend of June, had to think about when deciding what to wear. The four day long event includes dinners at wineries, a food and wine festival with a barrel auction, and the live wine auction. Thursday night dinners at wineries are perhaps the most casual of the events, a low key way to ease into the weekend. At St. Supéry Vineyards, Kara Butler wore a Tilly’s denim jacket, Express white dress and Ariat boots. “These are the same cowboy boots that I where when I go through the vines so I thought what’s better than that?” Pam Prahm chose an Anthropoligie top, thinking about dining in the vineyard. “Just something casual and fun.” At Friday’s barrel auction, held at Raymond Vineyards, stripes and long dresses trended for…
Detox Then Retox in Wine Country
Photo credit: Aubrie Pick The first time I heard of a winery offering a yoga class was in 2008, at Periscope Cellars in Emeryville, CA. This was actually a yoga class where you sipped wine as you held various poses. We shot a session for an episode of In Wine Country and I love the shot at the end of the woman holding the wine glass with her foot. Since then it seems that no matter where you are in American wine country you’re not far from a yoga class at a winery. You can do your best downward dog at wineries in Temecula, CA, in the Lehigh Valley, PA wine country or along the Loudoun Wine Trail in Virginia. The trend has also taken off in Canada, especially in the Niagara grape growing region where there’s a Yoga in the Vineyard Facebook page with 239 “likes.” In addition to yoga, you…
New Kids On The Wine Block
The Santa Cruz Mountains American Viticulture Area (AVA), in northern California, running along the Pacific coast south of San Francisco to Santa Cruz, is one of the most diverse wine growing regions in the world. This wine country is also one of the oldest in California, dating back to the mid 1880’s when pioneers like Paul Masson were growing grapes and making wine here. There are nearly 70 wineries that call the Santa Cruz Mountains home, and a few new kids on the block are noteworthy newcomers. Silvertip Vineyards Silvertip Vineyards is what you would call a destination winery — but not because you’ll find a fancy chateau or Michelin-starred dining there. You have to work to find this Santa Cruz Mountains winery, tucked away among the redwoods, only a few miles as the crow files from Silicon Valley, but a world away in this forested setting. You do…
Drinking Wine For A Good Cause
Every year there are countless wine launches, and so many get lost in the shuffle. I can’t tell you how many press releases fill my inbox or Twitter feed announcing the latest and greatest wine to come on the market. But these three wines are giving back to the community and in light of that, certainly worth seeking out. Alder Fels National Parks Foundation Wine Collection In these days of budgetary cutbacks and the sequester, it’s nice to see something done to help promote our national parks. With summer just around the corner and peak travel time to parks such as Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone about to begin, the timing is right for wines created to give back to the National Park Foundation, the charity arm of America’s nearly 400 national parks. Alder Fels Winery, in California’s Sonoma Valley, partnered with the Foundation to develop the National…
FRAGments: A New Perfume Event
Maggie Mahboubian is on a mission. A mission to make the world a more fragrant place. A mission to introduce the world to the independent, artisan perfumers working in this country and Canada. A mission to create a place where perfume lovers, and those just curious about this growing indie perfume movement, can go to chat up the perfumers and have time to experience the scents. A mission to “feed the senses.” To that end, she’s created FRAGments, a one day fragrance salon in Los Angeles, which will take place on June 22, 2013. An architect by training, Maggie launched her own boutique scent line Parfums Lalun at the Artisan Fragrance Salon in Los Angeles in September 2012. I met Maggie there, and tried her lovely natural perfumes, including Blanche de Bois, made with gardenia from her own garden, Qajar Rose and La Lune de Miel. After participating more…