Wine, Life, and Insight along the Gironde
The relatively little town of Blaye, a 45 minute drive northeast of Bordeaux city, perches on the Gironde estuary. From here you catch a ferry across to the more renowned…
Seductive Saint Emilion
A.A. Milne, the author of Winnie the Pooh, also wrote a poem about King John. "King John was not a good man, And no good friends had he. He stayed…
Secrets of Right Bank Bordeaux
This is where it all changes. Close to where it all began. The Gironde Estuary - the widening river mouth of southwest France that flows into the Atlantic Ocean -…
Casablanca, Ulysses, and Sailing to Bordeaux
Annick and Pierre Saturney met in the Moroccan city of Casablanca. They soon married. She was born in Morocco, of parents from Brittany in France who had moved to North…
Skip the Wine Bars of Paris?
My Paris wine tasting plans disintegrated. Great luck, really. First, I surfed the Net, then checked FourSquare, then Googled wine bars within a few kilometers walking distance of my rented…
Hemingway and Vikings Long Gone from Paris
This is not the Paris of Hemingway. Of Morse, Fenimore Cooper, or Thomas Jefferson. This is not the Paris of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Woody Allen or Dan Brown. This is…
Women and Wine
Here are some excerpts from the book Vino Voices, which includes sparks of wisdom whittled from women who bent their backs, tasted bankruptcy, abandoned careers, and jumped on a lifestyle…
Guys and Grapes
Flavio Fennochio - Barolo Winemaker from the Piemonte Region of Italy We receive the grapes from God...There’s a little part of me in this wine. I didn’t build the car,…
Wine Bottles and Battles; Crusades and Connections
I pulled out four bottles of wine from a box recently bought from a French friend - Jean Claude - as well as a bottle from a co-worker who had…
Bond, Bangkok, Baja, Burgundy and Bordeaux
I recently had the fortune to fly to Bangkok via Thai Airways from the vibrant city of Lahore, Pakistan. During the redeye flight there was a choice of four wines…