Are at Eileen’s Bakery. Can I tell you they are divine? The hollandaise sauce is light and lemony, just perfect. Great eggs cooked just underdone so that they can be safely microwaved, home-made muffins and delicious ham.

Even better you can get them to go. So come in to kybecca and grab a bottle of Baby Prosecco sparkling wine to make mimosas, then head to Eileen’s. I promise you that this will make a perfect Sunday morning.

Eve, who works with kybecca and blogs here recently sent me this fantastic slide-show about a Manga series for grown-ups that teaches them about wine. As always with the Japanese it takes an unusual and delightful slant.

“It’s powerful,” Shizuku says of a 2001 Bordeaux, suddenly overwhelmed with images of a turntable, guitars and Freddie Mercury. “But it also has a meltingly sweet taste, with an acidic aftertaste that catches you by surprise. It’s like the voice of Queen’s lead vocalist, sweet and husky, enveloped in thick guitar riffs and heavy drums.”

Our very own Amy dressed as Sarah Palin for Halloween. You must see this one in person.

The Washington Post’s wine column has not been the same since Micheal Franz left a few years ago. He was one of my favorite writers and always had something interesting to say. These days I hardly ever read the Post’s articles on wine as they tend to be focused on mass-produced offerings and just not that interesting. I was delighted to be proved wrong today when I saw an article on pairing wines with bold flavors.

“Loud” flavors — hot, spicy and/or acidic — can be tricky to pair with wine. There’s no faster way to obliterate the nuances of a wine than to serve it with a dish whose flavors will jump out and make those subtleties disappear.

The article goes on to make pairings for specific bold flavors such as wasabi, chilis and more. Click here to be directed to the article.

Click on this link to see a panoramic photo of the wine bar. A big thank you to Bob German for taking these photos.

Check out our progress!

This is the bar where the enomatics will be located and the metal boxes below will house bottles of wine. The top has been handcrafted from cherry. The picture also gives you a peek at the newly sanded floors which are looking so great. We hope to be open very soon.

Long before reading Dr. Vino’s blog I have wondered about this subject. On several occasions I have visited restaurants with their Award of Excellence posted prominently by the door only to look at their wine lists and wonder what was excellent about it. Now it turns out that an intrepid blogger was able to get the Wine Spectator award with only a phone number and clumsy website.

If you decided to get a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for you restaurant wine list, what would you need? The answer according to Robin Goldstein is $250 and Microsoft Word. Restaurant not actually required. Goldstein, the author of The Wine Trials, has a posting up on a new web site describing how he invented a restaurant name, Osteria l’Intrepido, a riff on “fearless.” Then he typed up a menu (”a fun amalgamation of somewhat bumbling nouvelle-Italian recipes”), put together a wine list, and submitted both to Wine Spectator–along with the $250 fee. The list was approved and given an Award of Excellence.

Further, the author of the phony restaurant says:

It’s troubling, of course, that a restaurant that doesn’t exist could win an Award of Excellence. But it’s also troubling that the award doesn’t seem to be particularly tied to the quality of the wine list, even by Wine Spectator’s own standards. Although the main wine list that I submitted was made up of fairly standard Italian-focused selections, Osteria L’Intrepido’s “reserve wine list” was largely chosen from among the lowest-scoring Italian wines in Wine Spectator over the past 20 years.

As a restaurant owner this leaves me in a real quandary. The award does seem to impress people, and probably solidifies a restaurant as a wine destination in consumer’s minds. However without any sort of measurable standards the award is meaningless.
Thoughts?

For all you Prisoner and Papillon Fans who can’t stand waiting for the new vintage we have a little something to tide you over. Winemaker and owner of Orin Swift owns 50 acres in soda canyon where the grapes are sourced for this wonderful cab.