WineFashionista
Joy Sterling – Iron Horse Vineyards
Expert Opinions – My article in San Francisco Magazine
Celebrating Diversity in Winemaking

Joy Sterling – Iron Horse Vineyards

Wine

Expert Opinions – My article in San Francisco Magazine

Wine

Celebrating Diversity in Winemaking

Wine

Gardenia In Full Bloom At CREED

Perfume

Ah gardenia.  This white flower’s creamy, milky fragrance is a heady scent.  There have been many interpretations of gardenia as a perfume.  The venerable fragrance House of Creed has created Fleurs de Gardenia, the latest scent in the repertoire of Creed’s perfumes.  With Valentines Day coming up, should you need a gift, this beautiful fragrance is a fitting romantic gift.

Fleurs de Gardenia - CREED Boutique

To launch this fragrance, Erwin Creed traveled from Paris to the United States, making personal appearances at six Neiman Marcus stores in November, where Fleurs de Gardenia is sold exclusively, including the San Francisco store (where I met him).  It’s rare that Erwin gets to do an in-store appearance, so it is a big deal that he is in town. There are violins playing.

Erwin CREED 2013 photo

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Only Pink Bubbles Will Do For Valentine’s Day

Wine

What’s more romantic than Champagne?  Pink Champagne or sparkling wine.  I’ve been pitched all sorts of wines to recommend for Valentine Day celebrations, but most of the wines are still wines.  None of those will do.  For me, it’s bubbles or nothing. And they should be pink. The traditional choice is Champagne, and my go-to wine is the Billecart-Salmon NV Rosé, with its delicate bubbles and salmon pink hue.  This is a brut sparkler, very dry, with a subdued floral and fruity aroma, a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.  At around $75 it is a splurge – but believe it or not, it’s available on Amazon.com I’m a big fan of California sparkling wine, and some of the best bubbly is produced by Domaine Carneros.  This house is in the Carneros region of Napa, which is a fantastic region for growing sparkling wine grapes.  For Valentine’s…

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The One Wine Trend I Want To Go Away

Wine

Be flirty

First we had “critter” labels for wine — you know, Yellow Tail, Little Penguin, Dancing Bull, Smoking Loon.  Then came what I call “dessert” labels — Cupcake, Layer Cake. Let’s not forget the “mommy” labels – MommyJuice, Mommy’s Little Helper.  Now we have what I’m calling “identity” labels – Middle Sister, Bridesmaid and Skinnygirl.  Do we really need a wine label to tell us who we are or how we should Be?

I cringe when I see these labels.  There’s the Be. label, where each varietal is labeled something different.  There’s Be. Flirty, Be. Bright and so on.  The line of Middle Sister wines breaks it down to Drama Queen, Goodie Two Shoes, Forever Cool and more.  I’ve also seen Bridesmaid and Mad Housewife wine labels. Please please wine gods, make it stop.

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How To Love Wine: Eric Asimov Says “Pull Corks”

Wine

book cover

Eric Asimov, The New York Times wine critic, is still learning about wine.  “Absolutely,” he says.  He’s in Berkeley, CA at Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, about to do a reading from his new book How to Love Wine.  Asimov also admits to being wrong sometimes on blind tastings.  Surprising?  Yes.  Comforting?  Oh yes.

“People often talk to me about how they feel about wine and often it takes the form of telling me their troubles ‘I like wine I know I should I just don’t get all those aromas and flavors,” says Asimov.  This creates what he calls wine anxiety.  And that’s what’s standing in the way of people loving wine.

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10 Last Minute Holiday Wine Gifts

Wine

With about a week to go until Christmas Day, have you done all of your holiday gift shopping?  Have you even started?  If not, don’t despair.  To the rescue, a list of the 10 best wine gifts that you can snap up at the last minute — and it won’t look like you waited until the last minute. Check out these gift ideas that are more creative and thoughtful than a bottle of wine.

Courtesy Vine of the Wine
Courtesy Vine of the Wine

Bottlestoppers.  You see them everywhere, but these colorful stoppers, made by Vine of the Wine are truly unique.  They’re made by incorporating grapevines into the stoppers themselves.

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the girl & the fig – 15 Years In Wine Country

Food
Photo by Steven Krause

“I love our plats du jour  at all our restaurants, we’ve been doing it forever.”  Restaurateur Sondra Bernstein is perhaps best known for her iconic Sonoma wine country restaurant the girl & the fig.  She first opened it in the charming Sonoma County town of Glen Ellen 15 years ago, in 1997.  Since then she moved the eatery to the square in downtown Sonoma.  the girl & the fig Cookbook was published in 2004 and is now in its 5th printing.  Her latest tome  Plats du Jour:  the girl & the fig’s Journey Through the Seasons in Wine Country is truly handcrafted.  “I taught myself book design and I self-published,” she says.  It’s also available in an e-version.

Photos by Steven Krause

Plats du Jour reflects Sondra’s philosophy of eating locally with the seasons.  What is a plats du jour?  Translated from French it means “plate of the day;” or the daily special if you will, but always offered as a three course meal, with an appetizer, entree then cheese or dessert to finish.  Sondra developed a love for the plats du jour menu during her travels through France.  At  “the fig” (Sondra’s shorthand for the restaurant) the plats du jour menu changes weekly.  “It’s a nice cross section of each of the seasons and because we’re doing so much at the farm, it’s a nice way to follow the seasons and see what’s really happening there.”

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Shafer Vineyard’s Road To Success Not An Easy One

Wine

If you had told John Shafer, when he moved from Chicago to Napa Valley in 1973, that his winery and one specific vineyard would earn the highest critical acclaim, bring in top bids at wine auctions and create a formidable fan following, he would probably have scoffed, being the practical vintner that he is.  But Shafer’s success in the wine world wasn’t instant and wasn’t easy going at all.  In fact when you learn the stories of harvests where they couldn’t get pickers on time, or the vintage with a stuck fermentation that he had to get started using electric blankets, well, you wonder how Shafer ever made it to where the winery is today with a cult-like status. 

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Scent as Pure Art

Perfume
Photos by Rich Kallaher, Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design

Fragrance is having its moment.  You expect to find perfume on display in drug stores, in department stores, in high end boutiques.  You even find it airports at duty free shops.  In a museum?  That’s probably the last place you’d expect to find perfume.  By the way, don’t call it perfume. I’ll explain later. Chandler Burr is the mastermind of the new Department of Olfactory Art at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City.  His position as curator is one he created, successfully pitched to MAD in 2010.  At that time, Chandler was the one and only scent critic for the New York Times, where he wrote about fragrance the same way as art, dance and book critic would write about the art they cover.  Chandler’s point of view then as now, is that scents are works of art and the people creating them are artists in their own right.

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SOMM Reveals Secret World of the Master Sommeliers

Wine


It’s not easy to make a film or a video around the subject of wine.  I should know, I produced the TV show In Wine Country on NBC for nine seasons.  Wine on the big or little screen gets super boring.  Our challenge was always ‘how do we make wine interesting?  How do we make it less intimidating?’

One way to do it is to tell stories about the people and not focus on the wine.  And that’s what SOMM, a documentary film directed by Jason Wise does.  SOMM opened the 2nd annual Napa Valley Film Festival Wednesday night to a packed house and standing ovation.  While I’d venture to say our crowd was very wine savvy, SOMM does something that makes it worth seeing.  SOMM takes you into the world of The Court of Master Sommeliers, an organization that is notoriously secretive.  That they let Jason’s camera capture what it is like to prepare for an exam that only 200 or so people have ever passed is extraordinary. 

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A Jolt of Color: Makeup By Dick Page

Fashionista

He’s backstage at Michael Kors, Marc by Marc Jacobs and Narciso Rodriguez.  Color is his mantra; helping women feel beautiful is his goal.

Uber makeup artist Dick Page was in San Francisco recently for an appearance at Nordstrom as the Artistic Director of Shiseido, a position he’s held since March 2007.   He brought with him a team of Shiseido makeup artists to add color to the more than 230 women who came to the event.  And what an event it was.  Page consulted on color for the guests, and posed endless times with fans under the glare of bright lights in front of the Shiseido step and repeat.

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