Category Archives: Wine

Bastianich 2008 Sauvignon Blanc

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Had a glass of "2008 Bastianich Sauvignon Blanc" at Bayona in New Orleans. I'm assuming it's the one listed on the net as from the  DOC "Colli Orientali del Friuli" (at Bayona they listed it as from "Venezia", but since the Colli Orientali del Friuli are in the autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, that's probably the one).  Fantastic! Hints of grassiness (in a good way), minerality, raciness. Balanced, not high-alcohol, with a long finish. This wine is the essence of Sauvignon Blanc---no histrionics, no in-your-face flavors of gooseberry or whatever, just delicious, sappy, wine you want more of, with or without food. Hats off to everyone involved with this, from vineyard managers to winemakers to distributors and retailers: we need more wine like this!

Here's Bastianich's blog.

Herbsaint, New Orleans (Restaurant review)

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Herbsaint is an excellent restaurant on St. Charles street in the central business district of New Orleans.  I have good memories of eating there a few years ago, and I had dinner there twice this week.  It has a bit more casual and hipper vibe than some of the top foodie meccas here, with white mosaic tile floor with black accents in the bar that looks like it might be original from the 20's, cracks and all, large storefront plate-glass windows, a thick semigloss paint job on the walls and woodwork, off-white with the faintest avocado tinge, some dropped down lighting boxes hung from the ceiling, white tablecloths and comfortable oak chairs with a 20's/30's feel as well.  The place was packed on a Monday night---good sign.  I went with three friends.  We ate in the back room, not quite as nice an atmosphere as the main room, but fine.  My duck gumbo was intensely flavorful and hearty.  Olive oil seared Louisiana shrimp with tomato confit and breaded fried eggplant were delectable.  These were the best shrimp I've had on this trip to New Orleans---flavorful, extremely fresh, touched but not overwhelmed with some spices reminiscent of the New Orleans "barbecue" shrimp (but basically a grilled or sauted preparation, not swimming in the mildly spicy "barbecue" sauce).  The tomato confit was too sharply vinegary for my taste; the eggplant was quite good, though.  We drank a bottle of wine from Chateau de la Liquiere, at Faugeres in the Languedoc, recommended by the waiter over my initial choice of the Chave "Mon Coeur" Cotes du Rhone.  It was a good solid wine, reasonably tannic but not overbearing or rough, and fairly smooth---well flavored, with some golden leafy notes (reminded me of a California oak forest for some reason), but not complex.  My dinner companions raved over it more than I did---perhaps a bit of a sniffle was preventing me from fully appreciating it, or it maybe it was the $55 price tag.  It complemented the food well.  For dessert, I took one of the waiter's top recomendations---the warm banana tart.  It was advice well taken---high-end and homey at the same time, with a delicious, well browned, thick crumbly tart crust, firmish, delicious filling somewhere between pecan pie filling and banana-flavored marzipan, and delectable seared glazed banana slices and mint leaves on top.  This and the shrimp were seriously delicious culinary achivements, the sort of stuff Michelin stars and such are made of.

Too tired to walk far from my hotel, the next night I went back thinking I'd have a small dinner.  I ended up getting the special Italian tasting menu (one each week, for the month of October), for $45.  This one started with a small antipasto of thinly sliced, excellent hard (but not tough!) salame, and some marinated diced eggplant (nice but not as good as the salame).  The Crab Gnudi were superb, gnocchi-like balls of crabmeat held together with ricotta and grilled or seared, served on swirls of delicious, intensely flavored olive oil (and some other delicious sauce that was a pale orange (something citrusy, perhaps?)).    The dish was less delicately flavored than I expected, but superb.  Herbsaint seems to have a style of "high-end heartiness"---perhaps it's a Cajun-food influence: they tend toward big flavors, smokiness, searing along with a little innovation and fusion.  The main course certainly followed that model: baked striped bass with tomatoes, fennel, and basil was served in the paella pan it was baked in, and featured a chunk of firm, flavorful, skin-on bass in a smoky, thick tomato sauce in which big slices of fennel had braised to tenderness.  It was a lot for one person to eat, and if it had a flaw it might have been a bit of excessive smokiness, but was an extremely tasty take on what might be a pan-Mediterranean tradition of cooking fish over wood fires at sea's edge---it called up stories of pine-smoke-scented bouillabaisses on the Riviera, and images of the Ligurian coast.  The server mentioned "a white cake" when I ordered the menu---the menu said Cassata Siciliana, usually a cake of ricotta and candied fruit flavored with liqueur---but it was indeed a square of white cake---high end Sara Lee, basically, with a bit of a caramel syrup and some tasty toasted hazelnuts on the cake.  The cake was velvety and fresh but not too special.  The chocolate salame, however, was excellent.

A Baumard "Cuvee Ancien" (a botrytized sweet wine, presumably a Chenin Blanc from the Loire, as Baumard also produce a Cote du Layon) was a good accompaniment to (and more interesting than) the cake, mellow and sweet but not cloying, and with nice flavor notes of dried orange peel, hints of brown sugar, and botrytis, though not a complex standout.  The main course went perfectly with a very good Commanderie de Peyrassol Rose 2007  from the mountains of Provence, though I suspect my other potential choice, a Barbera from an excellent producer, would also have gone well with it.  The Chateau d'Epire 2006 Savennieres, a firm, slightly steely and minerally Chenin Blanc based wine from the Loire, with a hint of honey and a balanced, smoothness, went perfectly with the crab (though it should have been served a touch colder).

For someone dining alone, the tables in the front window by the bar are a bonus---good seats from which to watch everyone having fun at the bar and in the restaurant, as well as a pleasant view of the outside seating and St. Charles street.

Overall, a very reliable, enjoyable place, well-appreciated by lots of locals, and with a very long and well chosen wine list, much more interesting wines by the glass than many places have, and a menu that is likely to deliver, if not guaranteed constant perfection, hearty, interesting, imaginative food and at least several dishes on each visit that will put you "in the zone."

Herbsaint Bar & Restaurant on Urbanspoon

Restaurant Review: Bacco, New Orleans

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Arrived at New Orleans yesterday for the 2nd annual Workshop on Informatic Phenomena at Tulane, organized by Mike Mislove of the Math department and Keye Martin of the Naval Research Lab.  What with a half-hour wait for the Airport shuttle, and a slow ride past the Superdome as the Saints-Jets game was letting out, and some time to decompress and check the jazz listings before going out for dinner, it was around 8 before I was ready to eat, and most of my favorite New Orleans restaurants (Bayona, Herbsaint, Stella!, Lilettte) are closed on Sunday.  Rather than the old standby of oysters and a glass of white wine at the circular bar in the Bourbon hotel, I decided to check out Bacco, on Chartres a few blocks into the French Quarter from Canal, as it had looked promising from the outside on earlier visits, and the menu looked interesting online.  It's run by Ralph Brennan of the famed New Orleans restaurant family (Dickie Brennan's, Mr. B's Bistro, etc.., etc..., etc...).  Although I've enjoyed Mr. B's in particular, this gave me slight pause, as I'd generally expect the ne plus ultra in foodie bliss to be found in a place owned by a lone chef pursuing his or her passion, rather than associated with such a dynasty.  And I've seen Bacco advertised in the New Orleans airport, another question mark.  But I wasn't necessarily looking for the ne plus ultra, I was looking for an enjoyable low key dinner.

Perhaps it was a mistake to mention I was walking over from a hotel, and call from an out-of-state cell phone, for despite my being fairly smartly dressed, and the warm and elegant front rooms with windows on Chartres street appearing far from full, I was put in a less-elegant though OK back room with the trainers and tee-shirt crowd.  An artichoke, oyster, and cream soup was excellent and different from expectations---smooth and buttery, but larded with bits of fresh artichoke and greens.  The New Orleans/Brennans' touch was definitely showing in the richness and smoothness of this dish.  I wouldn't want to eat food this rich every day, but it was a treat.   It went well with a glass of 2006 Maso Canali Pinot Grigio from the Trentino region of Italy---an honest, fresh, grapey, not-overblown glass of wine with some finesse and a restrained fruitiness and perhaps a hint of bitter almond.  Possibly this might have gone better with my next course, and the 2007 Nozzole Chardonnay "Le Bruniche" from Tuscany that I ordered to go with it, or the Chateau St. Jean Chardonnay (usually reliable, if not always exciting, with hints of butteriness, yeastiness, and lemon, and good balance) that was also on offer, would have gone better with the soup.   The ciabatta bread was tasty, not too soft, although very fresh plain butter would have been better than the lightly garlicked butter they served with it.

The Chardonnay turned out to also be a nice example of Italian white winemaking.   A bit racy, maybe even slightly grassy, it, like the Pinot Grigio, avoided the overbearing, high-alcohol impression that's all too common in lower-end Chardonnays with some pretensions, and had a little complexity to boot.  (I didn't boot it, though.)  I had it with a grilled black drum (that's a fish...) on a bed of risotto flecked with wild rice, the whole topped with thinly cut caramelized onions (or something from the onion family, anyway) and balsamic half-grapes.  The grapes were a highlight, little sweet-and-sour flavor packets bursting in the mouth.  The fish was good, done just right, and very mild.  The dish was good overall but not a knockout.  Unfortunately, perhaps because it was getting toward closing time on a Sunday and the kitchen was ready to close, the risotto was definitely underdone (no, I am not one for mushy risotto).  The rice was tasty and large-grained, probably a high-end Louisiana risotto rice, but although edible, a bit too crunchy.  It's possible---but not certain---that with perfectly-cooked rice, the elements of the dish would have melded into something sublime, but in the event, that didn't happen.  Still a tasty dish.  (Incidentally, the waitress' top dish recommendations had been the Maine lobster and gulf shrimp ravioli with champagne butter sauce and caviar, and the Bacco shrimp, so maybe I'll try one of those next time.)

While pondering whether to add unneeded calories by having dessert, I was offered dessert on the house.   I had a chocolate panna cotta, with a raspberry sauce (or was it a coulis?  Is there a difference?) and a bit of chocolate sauce, topped with a large curl of thin dark chocolate.  I've had quite a few panna cottas in Italy, and the flavor and texture can vary quite a bit.  This one was excellent, on the firm side but still light enough, with a slightly granular texture that for me was not a flaw, but added interest.  Good strong chocolate flavor, but restrained enough to be able to taste the creaminess; the chocolate curl on top was high-quality and the raspberry sauce fresh-tasting.  With decaf coffee (black), a perfect end, and a dessert I'd come back for.

The service was friendly, and very efficient.  One of the waitresses topped up my water glass several times when it was nearly full, but that was the only slight misstep and it certainly beat letting it run dry.

Overall, the food blended traditional Italian elements with a bit of New Orleans influence and international trendy touches successfully.  I didn't think it was quite on the level of Bayona, Stella!, or Lilette, but I'd go back, and ask for a table in one of the front rooms or---if one can dine there as well as drink---just eat at the large semicircular bar which, in an open, well-lit but warm room, looked comfortable.  The food balanced tradition and imagination well, the style was a bit different than expected (more Creole-influenced smoothness and unctuousness) but in an enjoyable way; the wines available by the glass were interesting and well-chosen.

Bacco on Urbanspoon

Update: The 310 Chartres street location in the French quarter closed in January 2011; the owner, Ralph Brennan, hopes to reopen Bacco somewhere else in 2011, but I'm not sure if it will happen, or has happened.

2005 Winner's Tank Shiraz, Langhorne Creek, Australia... and the Future of Science

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I've mentioned before how fantastic the 2005 Aussie Shirazes are, especially from the Barossa valley and McClaren Vale (e.g. The Maverick).  Here's a review of the wine that got me started on them, in the form of an email I send to Michael Nielsen a few  years back, when I first tasted this wine.  The 2006 was also good, but like many of the '06 Australians, less balanced and suave, and a bit thinner and sharper, than the the '05 incarnation.  I've added a few links.   Maybe soon I'll post more on the '05 and '06 Shirazes from Oz.

Hi Michael---

I opened a wine tonight that in several ways reminded me of you.  So I'm suggesting you try a bottle
or six before you depart your native land for the greener (?), but certainly colder (except in the summer when you'll be sweating buckets) pastures of Ontario.  It's "The Winner's Tank" 2005 Aussie Shiraz, Langhorne Creek.  I was dubious about this puppy because its label is a photo of some big square concrete tank in the middle of pasture, behind a barbed-wire fence, with "Hawks '05" inscribed, along with some shtick about how the local tradition is for the winners of the annual Aussie Rules football tournament to gather in the vineyard and paint their names on the tank.

Label:

Label:

Clearly just a bunch of hooey from some canny Aussie businessmen-winemakers to sucker some of us ever-gullible yanks into spending twelve bucks on a bottle---to be consumed, no doubt, with the shrimp we've got going on our barbie.  But having allowed myself to be suckered into it by a salesman at the Santa Fe Cost Plus---or else at Kokoman, our local Pojoaque-pueblo based purveyor of cheap beer to the masses and expensive Bordeaux to the Santa Fe/Los Alamos crowd--I opened it tonight.  Well, it was excellent.  Probably shouldn't talk it up too much for that promotes disappointment (it's just wine, for crissake) but, what the heck.  One of the better wines I've ever had---starting out kind of velvety, and also fruity  but not with the enjoyable but somewhat tacky blueberries-'n-bubble-gum taste of some of the cheaper-but-still-decent Australian shirazes.  Nope, this also had a hint of darkness, maybe even veering towards an off-taste, rubbery or rotty but opening out with air into a kind of stony complexity you get with the best Rhone Valley syrahs of France (or one I had from the Santa Barbara area).  Of course the 15.5 percent alcohol could be influencing my perceptions too.  (But more often it's hard for the flavors to stand up to that alcohol level.)

Anyway, recalling the tasty bottle of Jacob's Creek Cabernet you once bought me for my birthday, or my dissertation submission or wedding or something, and the fact that you're probably the first person I ever heard about Aussie Rules football from, I thought you might enjoy this recommendation, that is if you indulge in wine on occasion.

Sorry I cheesed out on QIP this year... I can't recall if it's because of some confusion about abstract submission and the international date line, or just not getting my paperwork in at LANL with the ever-lengthing lead time required.  Possibly I was even doing some research at the time I needed to be paying attention to registration or paperwork.  I got into the staying-up-late-at-night-trying-to-prove-stuff mode about extending the no-broadcasting theorem to a general ordered vector spaces context, with Jon Barrett, Matt Leifer, and Alex Wilce (cf. our quant-ph), and kind of let everything else go to hell.  It was great, and I have a few other similarly abstract things in the pipeline as a side benefit.  I'll bet QIP07 was great too, though.

Anyway, if you run into this wine, try a bottle.  You might even stop by your local wine store and see if they have it.  If you don't like it, complain to me and I'll reimburse you.

Cheers,

Howard

P.S. By the way, I just saw for the first time your 2004 blog post on effective research and  really enjoyed it.  It encapsulates some things I've been realizing.  (You may see me next writing a book on information-processing in categories of ordered linear spaces, and hoping to reap some dividends in cool theorems along the way.)

I don't think Mike ever tried the wine.  There are a lot of Aussie wines, and not all are available everywhere, especially not in Ontario, where I've learned to my chagrin that there is only one source---the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (well, there are some wineries you can buy from, too, but their stuff is well represnted at LCBO).  I'm now in Ontario myself---at Perimeter institute, in part to work on the book referred to in the e-mail I quoted; Mike is still in Waterloo, but now instead of working at Perimeter on quantum information, he's writing his next book, The Future of Science, on how the internet will transform scientific research.   We invited him to give the after-banquet talk at QIP 2009 in Santa Fe, and I found it inspiring; one of several things that led to me start this blog.  For those of you who don't know, here's Michael Nielsen's first book (coauthored with Ike Chuang).

Foundational Questions in the Azores I: Peter Byrne on Hugh Everett and Many Worlds

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So far, there hasn't been much physics in Wine, Physics, and Song---nor much song, for that matter, though there's been plenty of wine, and some economics and politics.  I guess wine is easier and more relaxing to write about.  But it's time to redress that balance.

I arrived in Ponta Delgada, the main town of the island of São Miguel in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores, courtesy of the Foundational Questions Institute, to attend and speak at their second annual conference.  We were treated to dinner and an after-dinner talk.  (The wines, especially a white called  something like Tierra de Lavas that was served before dinner, were tasty.)  The talk was by Peter Byrne, who is writing a biography of Hugh Everett III, the originator (unless you want to ascribe it to Schrödinger in his cat paper) of what he called the "relative state" interpretation of quantum mechanics, often called the "many worlds interpretation" (MWI).  I was particularly interested in this talk because a fascination with the problem of how to interpret quantum theory is a large part of what got me into physics.  In 1989--1990 I wrote a paper (unpublished), "The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Psychological versus Physical Bases for the Multiplicity of "Worlds", arguing that Everett's interpretation had often been misunderstood as involving a "physical" splitting of the universe into different branches, whereas Everett was actually fairly clear that the "branching" into parts of the universe involving different outcomes of a quantum experiment was associated with different subspaces of a single Hilbert space of the world, subspaces defined by which of the different macroscopic outcomes of the experiment an observer had experienced.  So I was very interested to hear from Peter Byrne that among the boxes of Everett's paper that he has been sorting and studying, were drafts of Everett's thesis in which there is much more extensive discussion of splitting minds than was available even in the long version of his thesis published by Princeton.  If I'm reporting Byrne correctly, one of these drafts compares the splitting minds to splitting amoebas, noting there is no fact of the matter as to which of the amoebas is the original one.  The whole thing, he says, had much more extensive discussion of splitting, which his advisor John Wheeler made him take out (partly, if I understood correctly, because of negative comments by Bohr, relayed by Stern who was on Everett's thesis committee).   It will be interesting to see the details of these drafts, and find out more about how Everett understood this "splitting".

My early paper was to some extent a "devil's advocate" exercise---I did not then, and do not now, believe in Everett's interpretation in the sense that a macroscopically entangled wavefunction, describing me having all kinds of different conscious experiences, is a real entity.  But I did believe, and still do, that pushing Everett's idea as far as possible is one good way of getting a better understanding of what is weird about quantum theory, and of the unexpected difficulties we've encountered in figuring out what quantum physics has to tell us about the world, and our place in it.

My reasons for not accepting many worlds are in part tied up with the fact that there don't seem to be probabilities of measurement outcomes on this interpretation, as there are indeed not definite classical outcomes.  More on this later---it is something that I've been thinking about for years, and before Byrne's talk, I had a long discussion about it with Alan Guth at dinner.   But one last thing:  it was therefore striking to hear from Byrne that one of a myriad of titles Everett considered for his dissertation was "Wave mechanics without probability".

Baco Viejo 2008 Chardonnay DO Central Valley

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This inexpensive Chilean Chardonnay, which I drank at my parents' in DC recently, seems like great value---I believe they paid around $6 for it, but I'm not sure.  Some nice aromas and flavors something like peach and vanilla,  a rounded, balanced, even somewhat elegant feel in the mouth---not high-acid, but not flabby (or lush).   No overbearing oakiness--an excellent food wine.  Very drinkable, and somewhat reminiscent of Sonoma County's Chateau St. Jean Chardonnays---even their higher-end Robert Young Vineyard ones, which also have that low-acid, vanilla thing though more prominently, and (at least in the Robert Youngs) often with a velvetiness this lacks.   But velvetiness would not necessarily be an improvement.  This is crisper, a summer quaffer of a chardonnay but still quite flavorful and holding one's interest through a a meal---maybe not seriously complex, but far from one-dimensional.  Yum!  This is "produced and bottled by Viñas Errazuriz Ovalle, SA San Ignacio 2170 Santiago, Chile", and imported by Monsieur Touton, NYC; alas, I can't find a price or distributor reference with a cursory Google.  I do find some entertaining snark at Le Cheap Lush concerning Monsieur Touton, though---to which this wine would seem to be a counterexample, unless I was just in a particularly good mood when I drank it.

Maverick "Above the Law" 2005 Barossa Valley Shiraz

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2005 was a superb year, in surprisingly similar ways, in many of the most important winegrowing areas around the world.  California and South Australia certainly did well, and I'm told 2005 Bordeaux were excellent too.  (I haven't swilled enough of the latter to know without consulting my tasting notes...)  So I've gotten into a project of checking out Aussie Shiraz, especially from the Barossa and McClaren Vale...so many of them are just delicious, and some are truly great wines.  So I've just realized what others have probably known for more than a century...that this is one of the great grape/wine region combinations of the world.

What we may have here is a chance to benefit from the McCain campaign flameout last year... I don't know for sure that this wine was named and released with an eye to becoming the high-end swill of Republican conventioneers in St. Paul---indeed, perhaps the subtitle "Above the Law" was intended to underline the Obama campaign's theme ("more of the same").   But whatever the reason (the label actually say it's a tribute to the masive influx of immigrant mavericks to the Australian gold fields in 1851) for the too-cute name and the image of a Colt Navy Model 1851 pistol on the label of this puppy from Pure Love Wines, the wine hits the bullseye.

According to my tasting notes this is a full-bodied, pretty smooth wine with medium finegrained tannins, rich  blueberry and blackberry fruit, some spiciness or tarriness---one of the best "budget" Aussie Shirazes I've tasted yet.  Still excellent on the second day (after overnight refrigeration).  My wife liked it too.

I've only tasted one or two Aussie Shirazes this year that were better (a Two Dudes Gnarly Hands Two Hands Gnarly Dudes Shiraz) that I tasted at Vino Volo (BWI), which was sold out next time I passed through, at way more expensive, would be one; a 2005 Slipstream as well.)  This partakes of some of their complexity and tight structure, but is definitely not as full of smokiness, tarriness, and such.  In exchange, it veers toward lush, delicious fruitiness but without getting sloppy.

On further investigation the origin of the wine is described here.

The $15 price targeted is a great deal for this wine.  Major kudos to Pure Love's Jayson Woodbridge for this one, and I'll be on the lookout for its siblings at the same target price:  Barossa Jack, Desert Eagle, and Layer Cake.   What, no Community Organizer?  No matter, just buy this wine, get out your corkscrews, and drill... whoops, it has a Stelvin closure.  Unscrew, baby, unscrew!

Celler el Masroig 2007 Sol'a Fred

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Had this wine last night with a casual dinner of posole and english-muffin pizzas prepared by a friend who's visiting from the East Coast.  Not sure how much I paid for it, but it seems to go for around $10 on the internet.  The wine is 90% Carinyenya (Carignan), 10% Garnacha (Grenache), from the Denominaco' d'Origen Montsant, in Catalunya.  I think I bought in on the basis of a shelf-slip quoting a Parker (or at least Wine Advocate---Parker's publication which now employs other tasters/reviewers as well) rave.  Was a little apprehensive given that Carignan-based wines are sometimes a bit rough and one-dimensional.  Carignan was at one time widely planted in the Southwest of France and Northern Spain for it's high production of simple country wines.  For awhile many producers in the Languedoc and southern France were grubbing up Carignan vines and replanting with grapes with more international appeal, like Cabernet and Syrah.  Some of the wines thus produced were good to excellent, but from my limited experience some were also just dark and inky but uncomplex, high in alcohol, and tiring to drink.  I'd guess there's been a bit of return to roots in the area as some growers try to make more traditional grapes like Carignan give the best wines they can.  Anyway, Celler el Masroig has certainly succeeded in doing that here: this really is a perfect pizza wine, with the blackberry fruitiness that Carignan has at its best, tannins relatively smooth, not rough, and in the background, with a sappy, relatively smooth feel in the mouth that's delicious, and can even handle the mild spice of a posole (traditional New Mexican hominy and chile-based stew, in this case a vegan version).  Not a Great Wine, perhaps, but that's not the point---nor would a Great Wine be as enjoyable with a casual meal like this.  I doubt you'll find a better Carignan anywhere, and at ten bucks the price is about right.

Sometimes a wine touted as a great pizza or barbecue wine, a relatively uncomplicated, easy-drinking red, can turn out to be just boring, a bit rough, or tiring---not necessarily the fault of the touter, it may just depend on the exact food pairing; they may have had it with something that somehow cut, or complemented, the tannin and let the flavor emerge.  I don't think you'll have that problem with this baby, though---if it can handle pizza and posole, it should go with just about any food you'd normally want to serve an uncomplicated, fruity, southern European wine with---like burgers, barbecue, or for that matter, a cheese (like the yummy Cotswold with chives that our friend brought along to end the meal with).

Cheers!

Howard

How to appreciate wine (gosh, a tough one), and Greatest Bottle #1

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Since it's first in the title of the blog, I'll start out with a bit about wine.  Advice on how to appreciate it:

If it's yummy, drink it. If it's boring, cook with it. And don't forget to swirl and sniff!

Seriously, there are a lot of truisms you'll find in most good books on wine and wine-drinking---ones by Kermit Lynch, Robert Parker, Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson, and the lot, and most of them are true. Drink what YOU like. Share it with appreciative friends, when possible. (But don't be afraid to have a glass with some cheese and nuts if you're up late alone, or stuck on your own at a one-star restaurant in France, either...) Drink it with food, and give some thought to the pairing of wine and food. Consider two classic strategies for food/wine pairing: choose a wine with similar qualities to the food, that will harmonize with it (a velvety chardonnay with a soft, gently flavored white fish,like sole, for example, a fruitier, more acidic sauvignon blanc with a slightly fishier, firmer one like sea bass); or, choose a wine that will make a striking, though not clashing, foil to the dish. Don't be a slave to rules---if you like red with fish, drink it. If you like Lancers with something, drink it. When traveling, try the local wines, many of which will be much better when they haven't traveled far. (I've never had a really satisfying Loire red in the United States---what should be complexity and leafiness tends to become just a bit tannic and bitter, while the fruitiness never really takes wing---but I had three Bourgueils on a recent visit to France that were perfect with the dishes they accompanied, fresh, fruity, yet complex, some with leafy notes, or hints of coffee.) And---try aging the stuff when appropriate. It's a pain, it takes forethought, it can be a roll of the dice with wines whose ageworthiness has not been confirmed by decades (or centuries) of tradition, but it's worth it.

Above all, don't let a high price, or someone else's opinion, influence your taste unduly. If Parker thinks it's junk, but you like it, consider yourself lucky, and buy more: if he'd liked it, it probably would cost more. That doesn't mean Parker's an idiot, or a one-track fruit-and-tannin-bomb promoter as some would say; he tastes lots of wines, and will guide you to some stunningly good deals as well as some that may strike you as boring. (Okay, as boring fruit-and-tannin bombs, sometimes...).

With this in mind, I'll post an occasional series of notes on The Greatest Bottles I've Tasted, where greatest refers to the whole experience of drinking the wine, not to its abstract position in some hierarchy of the world's greatest wines. Such a hierarchy makes some sense, but it's far from the most important thing to keep in mind when enjoying wine. So, number one in my Greatest Wines Ever, is a plain old Cotes du Rhone whose name and vintage I've forgotten (it might have been something like Cuvee du Roi, but it was also one of the cheapest Cotes du Rhone around at the time). I drank it in Berkeley, in the mid or late eighties, while I was living in a bizarre one-person apartment on the south side, a few blocks Bay side of Telegraph. Bizarre because it consisted of a living/bed room into which the door from the landing opened directly, and beyond that, a small kitchen/dining area. (The bathroom, featuring a large claw-footed iron tub, was across the landing, though private, requiring a separate key for its deadbolt.) The area was classic student ghetto, with a pair of tennis shoes hanging from the phone lines out front whose possible significance escaped me at the time.

I drank this wine (not the whole bottle at once, of course), by myself, with nothing but bread and a country-style pate, medium-chunky, with embedded pistachios, and some decently chewy/flaky French bread whose source---Berkeley has a few---I forget. An absolutely perfect combination---the wine was devoid of complexity, medium-to-light-bodied, lowish in alcohol, only slightly if at all tannic, a bit on the watery side and tasting of nothing so much as grape koolaid. It was the perfect, slightly cool, fresh, grapy-tasting, thirst-slaking foil for the bread and pate. Probably there was also a hint of the typical Cotes-du-Rhone leafiness or smokiness---I don't recall with certainty, at this remove---but if so, it didn't overpower the freshness and fruitiness, though perhaps it added a little touch of complexity that nudged the whole experience into the category of Nirvana. This wine would be very unlikely to ever appear on anyone's list of the world's great wines, or even of the best Cotes du Rhone, but although I've had similarly memorable wine experiences with wines recognized as the world's greatest and most expensive, this experience was right up there with them. And that's what wine should be all about: enjoyable at the time, and maybe even providing a unique (because every bottling is different) and long-remembered experience....one of many vinous and non-vinous experiences that make up a life worth living.