Do you have any friends or relatives who know some famous celebrity? If so, do they talk incessantly about it, and make you feel like you too are connected to this celebrity by association? Well, I do. My mother in law lives in...
Read MoreAll wines grown around the world obey certain geographic rules. One of the most basic of these has to do with certain latitudes around the globe within which wines can be classified into specific climate zones. Vineyards can...
Read MoreFor those of you who have never played the game of guessing what the wine in a concealed bottle is, I wanted to share some of our tips on how to impress others with seemingly magical identification powers only master sommeliers...
Read MoreRose wines are the Rodney Dangerfield of the wine world. Does anyone give them respect? When I first joined my wine tasting group in the mid 90’s, there were some that seemed to, because we actually had aged rose’s...
Read MoreIn the pubertal environment of the all boys English High School of Istanbul, hormones raged. I suppose they do in every assortment of such boys. We didn’t quite know where to direct our rather hazy emerging sexuality. We...
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In one of the more surreal events of my years in the English High School of Istanbul, I came...
Read MoreThe bottle of wine you see in the picture was on sale for $20 at K&L Wines in San Francisco last weekend. So what?This is a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape from a good vintage, 2006, and its former price was around $40....
Read MoreOur most recent Friday night wine tasting took place at our friend Padmesh’s house. Pad, as we call him, has come to build an extensive Bordeaux collection which he has been sharing with us in the past few years. We have...
Read MoreThe English High School of Istanbul of the 1970’s was a remnant of its glorious past as was the mother country it represented. It clung on to old traditions, at least on the surface. Beset by endless financial difficulties, the...
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