My wife and I were invited to a recently acquainted friend’s home near us on the beach. She is a well-to-do realtor and the evening promised to be fun and interesting. She offered us a glass of wine and in tandem, we responded, “A glass of white wine, please.” I soon learned that this person was way beyond opinionated and replied, “All white wine tastes like crap! I only drink cabernet – you’ll love it!” (Yeah right!) I watched as she took it out of the rack, popped the cork out and poured three glasses (balloons, of course) of warm red wine. This was going to be horrible but, remember, you’re a guest so shut up, sip it slowly and don’t pucker or comment.

Andrew and I discovered this fantastic Red at Biaggi’s in Cedar Rapids at a wine tasting last year. Cinnabar Mercury Rising is a Red blend bottled by Cinnabar Cellars in Paso Robles.
It seems that all of the decent restaurants in CR are carrying this wine: Biaggi’s, Teddy’s, Daniel Arthur’s. So, it’s pretty cool that I [...]

I picked this wine up at Whole Foods in Chicago last month. It was mid-priced at $12.99 and had some kind of in-store rating of 90 or something. It was the right price and we wanted some red wine to go with our leftovers from PF Chang’s. Although it had this mysterious rating, I couldn’t [...]