Carl has been a little under the weather the last couple of days. So we’ve decided to pull out one of our editor’s favorite early blogs from January 21, 2013, to re-run. This piece is about Carl’s experience in the legendary Chef Charlie Trotter’s kitchen in Chicago. Trotter was an American chef and restaurateur. His most well-known restaurant, Charlie Trotter’s, was open in Chicago from 1987 to 2012…
2021 California Wine Harvest

If there is a low yield harvest, grape prices tend to go up because of the lack of grapes. If the yield is up, grape prices tend to stay steady or go down. This all tends to affect the price of a bottle of wine. The crop was light in 2020 with only 3.4 million tons of wine grapes being crushed…
2021 grape harvest, California wine harvest, harvest, price of grapes, price of wineMore About Fine Wines

Back on May 9, 2018, I authored an article on fine wines in my wine blog. As my wine team began to taste wines for my 530 Wine Bar wine list, the term “Fine Wine” came up a number of times. As we were tasting, if the three of us (Stan Minden, Tom Welsh, and I) did not all vote “yes” on a wine, it did not make the list…
fine winesWhy Learn About Wine?

If you are a fan of wine and drink four to five glasses of wine a week, then you are a candidate for learning about wine. Learning about wine can make your social experiences better. If you like enjoying wine with others, as I do, learning more about wine will allow you to…
learning about wine, wine knowledgeWhite Wines

As I have mentioned in the past, when I started drinking wine years ago, (I will not tell you how many years that was) I started with white wine. My favorite, back then, was Chablis. Chablis is a dry white wine that has crispness, citrus, flower aromas and flavors of pear and minerality. Even today I like Chablis and continue to drink it when I can…
Chablis, how to drink white wine, temperature for white wine, white wine