George Yatchisin
George Yatchisin writes about food, wine and cocktails from Santa Barbara, where he lives with his amazing wife, dogs and one very old chicken.
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Reese's Peanut Butter Cups with Meyer Family California Port: Imagine the movie 9½ Weeks if it had been produced by Hershey's Chocolates.
When it's good, it's a lithe, lovely marvel, with everything from cherry to rose to berry with occasional hints of herbs, tobacco, and even loam in the sense you're out in a freshly dug garden and the world smells right.
Maybe it's just with Halloween creeping around the calendar's corner and Walking Dead stumbling back on to AMC, but I've been wondering what winery might be the best to make zombie-fighting central if it ever comes to that.
At that price point -- at least at Trader Joe's -- you'll want to go with the house label, believe it or not.
Hilliard Bruce's wines are anything but exotic; they aim for classic expressions of Burgundian grapes.
What you taste when you taste wine blindfolded.
Wine and tomatoes? Do they work together?
"It's the Run DMC of pinots."
The winery that looks as pretty as its product tastes.
"Twenty years ago if we did this tasting it would be about oak. Since then people backed off the oak...maybe because the barrels are $900 each now."
Some winemakers will let you taste their unfinished wine ... it all feels very illicit!