Feed Me Portland!

Been busy and not able to write as often, but please don't think that means I've been starving and not drinking anything interesting. Oh no, my friends, I've been a very lucky Brooklynguy lately, in large part due to the generosity of friends. Here are some tidbits, things from the past few weeks that are worth mentioning:

Much has been written and many debates take place about how to rate wine. It seems now that the 100 point scale is seen as "old guard," that it has not been effective at communicating a wine's quality. There are of course other rating systems, and their effectiveness is also debatable. I don't want to spend time here summar

On new year's eve a good friend took pity on me, alone in the house with my very young and very wonderful daughters, and he decided to come over to hang out and have dinner. We of course opened some special wines on that night, one of which was a bottle I brought back from Jerez in October, Emilio Hidalgo Especial Amontill

Seven friends and I pool our money every year to buy about 8 bottles of Burgundy wine, wine that we wouldn't buy individually because of the high cost and the risk of bad bottles. Every year at around this time we get together over dinner and share the wines. This year the theme of our dinner was the great vineyards and pro

I was given an amazing birthday gift in November, an old bottle of wine by Produttori del Barbaresco, the 1959 Riserva. This is very exciting - how often does one get to drink a bottle that old? In my case, not very often. I've had a few old wines, but with the exception of a few cases, I haven't opened them myself. A more

Well, of the last few months anyway. There have been a few truly memorable drinks and eats in the past months that I never found a way to write about here. So I'll compile them in a best-of-the-unposted list from the last part of 2011.

Some recipes and techniques I like to keep to myself. I have to have something to impress you with if you come over for dinner, right? But some are so simple and so great that it becomes my civic duty to share. Here is one, a new one for me - a technique for cooking babyback ribs without a smoker or a grill. Honestly, it's

I thought it would be fun to do one more of these before the year ends. The other night, after picking up my kids and bringing them home to begin their week with me, I made a simple and quick dinner that we could eat together before bed time. Hamburgers, mashed potatoes, a few vegetables.

I've been having a hard time with red wine lately. Okay, I never have a problem with mature Burgundy, or mature red wine in general. But when I'm alone and I feel like opening something to drink with dinner, or to just have a glass, I almost always reach for white wine these days. White wine is so much more versatile with f

I had a birthday in November and a friend gave me a fantastic gift - Matt Kramer's "Making Sense of Burgundy." This book was published in 1990 and it continues to be on most shortlists of great