Recommended Wines

Chapter 54: A BIRTHDAY TRIP TO CALIFORNIA WINE COUNTRY

Greetings and salutations! I am writing this month’s Chapter with the realization that I am no longer a 50-something white guy, as last month’s birthday kicked past yet another important mile marker. Two thoughts: (i) How in the wide world of sports is that possible(?); and (ii) All things considered, it beats the heck out of the alternative. And what better wait to celebrate that big day than to get together with good friends and possibly another January 1960 baby (not to name any names, Lori, as that would be indiscreet) and to head to Napa and Sonoma for a long tasting weekend. In any event, our merry group was more or less evenly divided between females and males, so it was decided by the Birthday Girl that we visit some amazing Sonoma County purveyors of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and some remarkable Napa Valley Big Red wineries to satisfy everyone’s palates over the course of the long weekend.

Chapter 41: SCATTERSHOOTING WHILE WONDERING WHAT HAPPENED TO $20 NAPA CAB

My giving nature aside, the alarming cost of great Napa Cabernet Sauvignon is on my mind this month. And like the absurd price increase in college costs since I myself was a college freshman back in the Dark Ages (which now, according to my daughter and her friends, makes me “vintage”), the prices of Napa Valley’s trademark Napa Valley Cabs have shot up astronomically since the wine bug first nipped on yours truly. I have a sharp recollection of purchasing my first high-end Cab (a Peju Reserve 1994) in January of 1998 during a La Nina monsoon that blanketed Napa Valley. I held my breath and purchase this prized bottle…for the princely sum of $40. That equivalent bottle in April of 2017, just 19 years later, is now $125, over 300% of that first prized bottle that made my head spin, thinking that purchase was a one-time only deal! Well, so much for best laid plans, etc….

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