The headline read: “The Wine and Chocolate Diet.” Who could resist such a promise? Lose weight while drinking wine and eating chocolate? I simply had to read on.

I’m not a fan of sweeping generalizations—this applies to life as well as to wine. With that proviso I can state that, for the most part, I’ve never been a lover of California Pinot Noir.

I like desserts that involve the use of dangerous equipment. Crème brulée, for example, can be made with a propane torch to lightly brown its crispy top of caramelized sugar.

Imagine living in a suburban town sprinkled with picturesque hillside vineyards where you can stroll as part of your daily exercise routine. Yet you have all the conveniences of a large city nearby. That’s another reason why I love visiting the little neighborhoods in and around Stuttgart.

A year ago, I hardly knew what blogging was. This week, I’m heading to California to immerse myself in a world of food, wine, and new media at the second annual American Wine Bloggers Conference.

My friend Amelia said it best: If a wine could be a parfait, it would taste like the Henri Prudhon Saint-Aubin 1er Cru Sur Gamay 2003—a white Burgundy from a tricky vintage.

Hannibal invaded Umbria during the second Punic war. This week, it’s my turn.

The varietal wine Grignolino does not garner a lot of press attention. But last night, as I enjoyed it with a plate of roasted chestnuts, it earned a special place in my heart.

Sherry comes in a range of styles from bone dry and light to syrupy sweet. In this second of two posts on the topic, we look at the different Sherry styles and how they are served.

I grew up a tomboy in a neighborhood full of boys, four of whom were my brothers. I memorized sports statistics, played some outfield, and wore my bruised shins with pride. But the one thing I would never do was spit.

I experienced quite a bit of Europe on a backpacking trip before the onset of adulthood. Alas, I never made it to Greece until last night, when I finally got my first taste of Santorini.

Last year I walked away from a twenty-year career and a six-figure salary to work at my local wine shop. This being the 21st century, I’ve now been invited to share my passion for wine through this new blog.

Before I write anything about Gary Vaynerchuk, I need to send you to winelibrarytv.com. There's nothing I can put here that would capture him the way any of his daily ten-minute web videos do. In each one, he uses a gonzo-journalism approach to convey his latest feelings about wine—doing tasting showdowns and going off on tangents about everything from his beloved Jets to the WWF battles of his youth. It's as fun as you could imagine an intellectual wine discussion can be. And now that energy is focused in print, in the pages of Vaynerchuk's new book, 101 Wines to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World.