Right about now, you’re probably scratching your head and fretting over what special wine or related gift to give your favorite wine lover this holiday season.
Well, fret no more! You’re intrepid wino has a few recommendations for your consideration and I’m sure one or more of these vinous gift ideas just might work.

Wine BooksIn my opinion, the absolute best wine reference book is the World Atlas of Wine by Janis Robinson and Hugh Johnson. It’s a compendium of everything you need to know about wine, including information on specific grapes, wines and regions, as well as label descriptions, and the culture and history of wine. Check for it at your local bookshop or online.

How about a little wine and intrigue? Get yourself a copy of Wine and War by Don and Petie Kladstrup. This page-turner deals with the lengths to which French wine makers went to protect their precious products from the Nazis in WWII.

Wine StorageFinding a place to store your special wine is always a challenge. One pretty neat option is the Wine Enthusiast Six -Bottle Touch screen Wine Refrigerator. This adjustable, temperature- controlled wine refrigerator is a great gift for those who don’t have a lot of storage space, but want a reliable place to keep their special bottles. Check it out at: www.wineenthusiast.com. $130 with free shipping.

Wine StemwareThe aesthetics of sipping wine in crystal is oftentimes a very expensive proposition, but it’s nice to occasionally break out (probably not the best choice of words) the special stemware for that celebratory event. Riedel, Schott Zweise and Spiegelau are probably the best options for really fine crystal. You can find them at wine shops, department stores and online. 
Stocking Stuffers- How would you like to turn that special bottle of wine into a beautiful candleholder? Adam Morton of Bridgeview Candles, Accessories and Designs will do it for you. Check out his Facebook page (Bridgeview Candles) to peruse his work. You can also call him at 304-610-1553 or email him This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Adam’s studio is located at 139 South Court St. in Fayetteville, across the street from the Cathedral Café.

- For the manual dexterity challenged wine drinkers in your life, you might slip a container of Wine Away in that Christmas stocking. Wine Away is a red wine strain remover that cleans up a clears out those stains that so often appear on your clothes or carpet when people like me are attempting to sip and speak at the same time. Shop for it locally or simply Google “Wine Away” and find it online for about $10.

- Name It Wine Glass Markers are cool and colorful pens you can use to write on wine glasses, bottles or any glass surfaces. Great for signing that special wine gift and priced under $10. Amazon or other online sellers have it stocked for the Holidays

- I like to keep track of the truly special wines I have consumed, but getting the labels off the bottles is a real pain. So I recommend using Label Off. This product is an easy way to remove and collect those special wine labels. Label Off splits the printed surface of the paper from the adhesive backing leaving a laminated label to place into your wine catalog. Find it online at around $10.

Special Holiday WinesThe last several vintages (2012 through 2015) of cabernet sauvignon and red blends (meritages) from Napa and other northern California wine regions have been excellent. So you might consider these opulent, full-bodied, rich and balanced cabernets and meritages for that special red wine lover.

Meritages: Anderson’s Conn Valley Right Bank; Cain Five; Vineyard 29 Aida; Newton Claret; Joseph Phelps Insignia; Beringer Knights Valley Meritage; Artesia Meritage and William Hill Benchmark Meritage.

Cabernet Sauvignon: Shafer Stags Leap; Franciscan Napa Valley; Robert Mondavi Reserve; Rudd Mount Veeder; Beaulieu Georges De Latour Private Reserve; Joseph Heitz Martha's Vineyard; Cliff Lede Vineyards; Stags Leap Wine Cellars; Caymus Special Selection Cabernet and Siler Oak Napa.

Unlike Thanksgiving, the Christmas day meal does not have a universally accepted main course. In these United States, turkey is the traditional Thanksgiving centerpiece around which we prepare a whole host of other edible goodies such as bread stuffing, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. But the Christmas day repast is a more diverse culinary undertaking where our ethnic and/or cultural heritage largely determines what we put on the table that sacred day.

In homes where the ancestral heritage derives from the British Isles, Germany or other northern European locales, we Americans tend to lean toward either a repeat of Thanksgiving (with turkey and all the trimmings); we prepare a prime rib roast-centric meal; or we opt for baked ham as the featured main course.

In largely Catholic countries, like Italy, Christmas Eve dinner is just as important as the meal on Christmas day, and the menu is built around seafood. In my home, where I try to enjoy the best of both culinary traditions, my wife and I divide up responsibility for the two meals. I’m in charge of Christmas Eve while she prepares the Christmas Day feast.

So today, I’m going to recommend wines to accompany a Christmas Eve seafood dinner as well as vinous goodies to pair with Christmas day meals featuring prime rib, turkey or ham. Oh, and since New Year’s Eve is also rapidly approaching, I’ll suggest some sparklers to help you celebrate 2018.

The Feast of the Seven Fishes is an Italian culinary tradition that many Americans observe. In my home, we sometimes exceed the seven fishes, but we always have at least calamari, cod, shrimp, smelts, oysters, mussels and salmon on the menu. Since many of these sea creatures will be deep fried, it’s best to pair them with wines that are medium bodied, refreshing and even thirst quenching


Italian whites: Arneis: Cortese di Gavi: Greco di Tufo; and Falanghina; California Chardonnay: Cakebread Cellars; Ridge Vineyards Santa Cruz Mountains; Far Niente; and Dutton-Goldfield.

On Christmas day, if you’re preparing oven-roasted turkey as the main course, these wines will pair nicely: Chateauneuf Du Pape; Brunello Di Montalcino; Rioja; California zinfandel (I love the ones from Amador) or Chianti Classsico Riserva.

For baked ham with a sweet glaze, give red, white and rose these wines a try: Tavel Rose; Alsatian Riesling; Oregon or Sonoma Coast pinot noir; Malbec from Argentina; Teroldego (red) from northern Italy.

For the Christmas meal at Chez Brown, my wife will dry rub a bone-in prime rib roast with garlic, kosher salt and coarsely ground black pepper. Then she’ll roast it in the oven until it’s medium rare. Here’s what I’m considering for a wine accompaniment: 10-year or older Bordeaux Red; Meritage from Napa Valley; Northern Rhone Red (syrah from Cote Rotie); or an Italian Super Tuscan Blend.

There is nothing quite like Champagne or sparkling wine to ring in the New Year. Give one or more of these Champagnes a try: 2005 Charles Heidsieck Brut Millésime; Krug Grande Cuvee Brut; Nicholas Feuillatte “Blue Label” Brut; Veuve Cliquot Brut; and Piper-Heidesieck Brut Cuvée.

Sparkling wine (from regions other than Champagne): Mumm Napa Cuvee; Segura Viudas Reserva (Spain); Roderer Estate Brut Anderson Valley; La Marca Prosecco; Gruet Blanc de Noirs (New Mexico); Iron Horse Russian Cuvee; and Lucien Albrecht Cremant d’Alsace.

Have a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah and a prosperous New Year’s Eve!

Most of us will be out celebrating on New Year’s Eve.  When we wake up the next morning it will be 2018 and, after the obligatory New Year’s morning headache, guilt will set in and we’ll probably begin to think about resolving to seek self-improvement in the year ahead.

Sure, you could go to the gym, cut back on carbohydrates, or even make a concerted effort to think positive thoughts about your mother-in-law. But next month when these resolutions have gone down in flames, you’ll need something to boost your morale and repair your damaged self-esteem.

Well, why not resolve to improve an aspect of your life that you already find appealing and gratifying? How about considering some wine and food resolutions for the New Year that might just take your enjoyment of these endorphin-enhancing staples to new heights.

And keeping these resolutions will be so easy and rewarding that you’ll probably wish to make them permanent. So here are my wine and food related resolutions for 2018. You might wish to consider them too.


- Try unfamiliar appellations and wines like: pinot noir from Central Otago on the South Island of New Zealand (great with grilled salmon); the other white wine from Burgundy – Aligote (especially good with scallops); or Aglianico, the spicy red from the Campania region of southern Italy that is a lovely match with rack of lamb.

- Explore the wines of our sister state. The wine regions around Charlottesville and up the spine of the Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia have emerged as the best appellations on the east coast. I especially like the cabernet franc, viognier and chardonnay produced there. Rappahannock oysters, local cheeses, country ham and smoked tomato grits pair nicely with Virginia wines.

- Drink more sparkling wines with weekday meals and on non-special event occasions. Champagne and sparklers such as Cava from Spain, Cremant from Alsace and Prosecco from Italy go especially well with spicy dishes from places like Mexico, India and Thailand.

- Reexamine the wines of West Virginia. There are more than 20 wineries in our state and, while many of them are producing very good sweet wines and dry French-American hybrids (such as seyval blanc and chambourcin), others are trying to grow the better (vitis vinifera) varieties like cabernet, merlot, chardonnay and riesling.

- Drink more sweet wines as aperitifs and with dessert. Some folks have the misconception that sweet wines are for beginning wine drinkers or the unsophisticated. I think that is a largely an American myth since a lot of us associate sweet wines with the unpleasant experiences we might have had in our youth with sugary, high alcohol products. You might try Sauternes or Barzac from France, late harvest riesling from Germany or California or Vin Santo and Moscato di Asti from Italy.

And while it will be difficult for me to accomplish all of these New Year’s resolutions in 2018, I’ve resolved not to completely abandon moderation in pursuit of them.

Happy New Year!

Wine can be a pretty complicated hobby. So much of the language of wine is foreign and intimidating, and the incredible number of choices can be overwhelming. That’s why I try to simplify the process of wine appreciation as much as possible. Heck, I’ll even make fun of the whole wine snobbery thing from time to time.

Those of you old enough to remember my weekly wine columns in the 1980s, may recall that I asked members of the (apocryphal) Southside Bridge Tasting Club (SBTC) to act as a kind of tasting panel. Monthly, in the dead of night, I would visit the great bridge under which my expert panel would gather to sip and then critique the various wines of the time. The group would help me evaluate products for that segment of the wine drinking public that was — how shall I put it — more plebian in their tastes.

Today, I still try to avoid the pretentious aspect of wine appreciation, particularly when I recommend a bottle for your drinking pleasure. At a minimum, I hope you will at least have some idea what the wine actually tastes like. In addition, I hope that my description of the wine’s attributes leads you to understand why I suggest pairing it with a particular dish.

As you might expect, I spend a good deal of time not only tasting and then evaluating wine, I also read the descriptions of wines I have not tasted to determine if I should suggest them to you.

And while I’ll admit my wine descriptors are relatively short and to the point, most of the wine tasting notes I read from national experts are anything but brief. Here’s a typical example of how a critic from one of the national wine publications recently described a bottle of California cabernet sauvignon:

Dark ruby in color. Explosive aromatics feature a mix of ripe cherry, sweet spice, and dried rose petal, all framed by new oak nuances. Richly textured, packed with sweet red fruits, black cherry compote, tobacco, and licorice, finishing with dusty tannins and a juicy acid backbone. Drink now for its youthful extravagance, or hold off until at least 2035.

Huh??? This sounds like a mish-mash of totally disgusting and incompatible ingredients and a recipe for heartburn…or worse. If it wasn’t for those “dusty tannins and that juicy acid backbone”…

Every now and then, I’ll come up with some pretty obtuse, otherworldly or off-the-grid descriptions, but they’re always done with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. But the above-cited quote is, unfortunately, a pretty standard type description used by today’s wine intelligentsia.

Here are two wines for your consideration described in (hopefully) understandable, but not quite monosyllabic, language:

Gloria Ferrer Va de Vi Ultra Cuvee – This lovely sparkling wine from Sonoma’s Carneros district has aromas of almonds and toast. It is rich, yet balanced, with flavors ripe, green apples. Use it as an aperitif or with brunch foods.

2013 Sant’Antonio Paradiso – From Italy’s Veneto region, this medium-bodied red is full of ripe cherry flavors with just a touch of oak on the finish. Try it with barbecue baby back ribs that have been dry-rubbed with black pepper, kosher salt, brown sugar and cayenne pepper.

So the next time, you read about how a wine is “ethereal, orgasmic, or full of dusty tannin undertones,” go get a bottle of Annie Green Springs, unscrew the cap and toast the members of the Southside Bridge Tasting Club.

I’ve always stressed the importance of pairing your favorite wine with a complimentary food - or vice-versa. Why? Well to quote Aristotle : “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

In other words, if you think that thick, bone-in rib-eye is culinary nirvana, pair it with the right wine and the whole experience is elevated to a completely new level of sensory satisfaction. Sound hedonistic? Maybe, but hey, why only treat your palate to half the potential pleasure?

Today, I’m going to tell you about three recent food and wine pairing experiences that have been real “Aha Moments” for me. These occasions reminded me just how satisfying and fun it can be to find that perfect marriage of a particular wine with a complimentary dish.

It started with a meal at Sam’s Uptown Café during Restaurant Week. I love the varied menu at Sam’s, and the weekend brunch offerings are always superb. But this particular course at Restaurant Week was absolutely spectacular: Boar sausage roll with hen of the woods mushroom, heirloom tomato ragu, sautéed escarole and house ricotta. I selected a 2014 Wente Riva Ranch Arroyo Secco Pinot Noir to pair with the course. Sometimes selecting the right wine can be the result of a thoughtful and reasoned approach or it might just be the right guess and a big dose of dumb luck.

In this case, it was the latter, but what a great guess it was! Pinot noir, particularly from California’s central coast, can have earthy, root vegetable nuances which, in this pairing, particularly complimented the hen of the woods mushroom that was the prime ingredient in the boar sausage roll. Wonderful!


The second exceptional marriage of wine with a specific dish occurred at FeastivALL - the annual fundraiser for FestivALL where attendees attempt to pick a winner between wine and beer selections matched with each of five courses. I paired the course featuring lentil soup -composed of herb fennel sausage, roasted vegetables and grilled crostini - with a 2007 Bernard Faurie St. Joseph, a syrah from the northern Rhone Valley in France.

This hearty lentil soup needed a full-bodied and dry red, but one with enough acidity to provide a refreshing balance to the complex flavors of the dish. Zinfandel or a big cabernet sauvignon might have overwhelmed the soup, but the French syrah was perfect. I don’t think a California syrah or shiraz from Australia would have worked either because that style of syrah tends to accentuate the fruit sweetness of the grape.

Oh, by the way, in the beer vs wine throw down, FeastivALL attendees chose wine as the overall beverage winner this year!

The other excellent pairing of food and wine I experienced recently occurred during a visit to my brother Spike who lives in North Carolina. Spike lived the dream many of us have of owning and cooking at our very own restaurant. His five year stint (sentence?) as chief cook and bottle washer at a bistro-like establishment left him with burn marks on his hands and arms, a whole new epithet-enhanced vocabulary and a renewed appreciation for cooking at home.

Spike spent a career in the wine business so, when we get together, we do eat and drink well. This last visit, my brother bought a whole striped bass and rubbed the interior cavity of the fish (which had been dressed) with olive oil, garlic, lemon slices, coarsely ground black pepper and herbs. He then completely covered and packed the exterior of the fish with kosher salt and roasted it in the oven for about an hour.

The fish was moist, fragrant and luscious, and the 2014 Michel Lafarge Aligote made this experience deliciously memorable. Aligote is the other white of Burgundy (which most famously produces chardonnay) and the Lafarge wine is full of ripe green apple flavors, minerality and, in this instance, was a refreshing and harmonious compliment to the striped bass.

So the next time you’re thinking of uncorking a bottle of wine or you’re ruminating about what to prepare for dinner, consider combining the two endeavors. It will surely make the overall experience more complete and pleasurable.