I love Insalata Cap­rese. What’s not to love? Toma­toes, cheese and olive oil all on the same plate. But I will say, when I order it, I am always a lit­tle bit anx­ious before it arrives. Will it be a plate of faded red toma­toes with no fla­vor? Bland olive oil? Mushy cheese? OR will it be a plate of ruby red lush­ness, suc­cu­lent olive oil and firm slightly sweet cheese? Even if the waiter highly rec­om­mends it, some­times I pass because I can’t take the stress or dis­ap­point­ment. It is widely known that I have a low stress-threshold.

Today, I will let you in on my lit­tle secret to per­fect Insalata Cap­rese every time– at home.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Up and rested from the marathon day of vis­it­ing vine­yards and winer­ies, we were off to the Sonoma County Fair for — wait for it.….Wine Tast­ing! Pretty high class county fair, don­cha think?  There were more winer­ies and wines than you could shake a twisted stick at all under one roof and like most events at a county fair– they all had been judged.

A few years ago, Evette and I attended a promi­nent wine tast­ing event in Atlanta, but what did we know then? After a day of wine tast­ing under our belts, lit­er­ally, we were ready to See, Swirl, Sniff, Sip,  & Savor! And with 56 pages of wines avail­able to us, we had to pre­pare our strategy.

We were each given a wine glass, a book­let list­ing all vari­etals, winer­ies, price, year, name and they were all bro­ken down by award lev­els: Best of Class, Gold, Sil­ver, Bronze. There was no “show”, as in win, place, show. I have a feel­ing that they were just placed in the Bronze Class. But who cares, we had no inter­est in Bronze wines.

Oh~ I for­got to men­tion, we also received a slip of paper called a “pass­port” that listed the Best in Class wines. If you chose to sam­ple these wines, you were required to present this pass­port which would be care­fully checked and duti­fully delin­eated with a pre­cise check mark. Appar­ently, there had been some “over sam­pling” of these wines in the past years, so this pass­port was insti­tuted to con­trol the abuse. In the­ory this seems plau­si­ble. In prac­tice what really hap­pened was that the vol­un­teers pour­ing the wines were a bit over­whelmed by masses of peo­ple charg­ing the tables with glasses in their hands. They were check­ing the pass­ports at first, but after repeat­edly mark­ing the wrong wine, cross­ing out, get­ting flus­tered by the num­ber of bot­tles of wine they each had to pour, they gave up and fig­ured– Hey, when we’re out, we’re out…it’s not com­ing out of my pocket. Nor­mally, I don’t appre­ci­ate apa­thy, but in this case, I was will­ing to give it a pass.

Now back to the strate­gery. We had pur­chased tick­ets ahead of time and were there early to be sure to get a table. Since Angela and Michelle were wine-fair vet­er­ans from 2007, they were adamant that procur­ing a table was of utmost impor­tance. That way we had a place to set up the gourmet nib­blies we had pur­chased ear­lier and we also had a base camp from which we could send run­ners to the out­ly­ing rows of tables to hunt & gather tast­ings of our tar­geted wines and return to the fold to share and cri­tique. And that is just what we did for 3 relax­ing, enjoy­able hours.

The value of this expe­ri­ence is get­ting to taste dif­fer­ent vine­yards with the same vari­etals, side-by-side. It was fun to taste the Best In Class, yet really pre­fer the Gold or Sil­ver place. It gave me more con­fi­dence in wines I had pur­chased and in my own palette. But there’s no account­ing for taste ~ so to speak.

It is only right that we topped off our trip with a bit-of-the-bubbly and a visit to J. Vine­yards & Win­ery, which is known for their fab­u­lous sparkling wines. We were attend­ing J.‘s Fall Sparkling Release Party. Wow, you says to your­self– that sounds glam! And YES, it was!

We totally lucked into this event– with just a bit of a well-placed con­nec­tion. Angela is a mem­ber of their wine club. We orig­i­nally were going to visit The Bub­ble Room, which is a seated tast­ing salon where you are served per­fectly paired meals with the wine flight of your choice.

“Unfor­tu­nately”, they had sched­uled the Sparkling Release Party the week­end of our visit, so they offered invi­ta­tions to the exclu­sive event instead. Yes, well, that will have to “do.”

I had been lucky enough to be given a bot­tle of J.‘s Cuveé Cham­pagne for Christ­mas — Oops! Did I say Cham­pagne? Well, my dears, let’s clear some things up right away. In order for a sparkling white wine to be called Cham­pagne is must be pro­duced in the Cham­pagne appel­la­tion or region of France. If it is not, it is a sparkling white wine. As I was say­ing, I was for­tu­nate enough to have for­merly par­taken of J.‘s fab­u­lous Cuveé, so I was excited about tast­ing their other offerings.

There were four Releases being pre­sented that day and each had it’s own sta­tion and host­ess avail­able to explain the wine. There was also a tray of pre­cise food pair­ings for each wine pre­pared by J.‘s Exec­u­tive Chef Mark Cald­well and his culi­nary team. I wish I had payed more atten­tion to describe those to you. C’est la vie.

Wait­ers also floated through­out the crowd with sil­ver trays of addi­tional yummy arti­sanal nibblies.

There are sev­eral winer­ies in Napa & Sonoma that have Exec­u­tive Chefs on staff that work with the wine­maker to con­coct the most sump­tous and taste-bud tick­ling food & wine pair­ings for your din­ing plea­sure. Be sure to try and visit one of them if you plan to go– it is quite enlight­en­ing and brings the wine-tasting expe­ri­ence to a whole new level. For a head start in your research, here are a links to reviews: Sonoma Food & Wine Pair­ings, Napa Food & Wine Pairings.

As you might imag­ine, the tast­ing note descrip­tions of Sparkling wines are fun, flirty and “bub­bly.” I won’t list them all here, but be sure to click on each of the links to get an inkling of the ambiance of being at J.

The first 2 tast­ings were out­side on the ter­race over­look­ing the front vine­yard, gar­dens and pond with water­fall (I said it was Glam– does a Sweet diva lie when describ­ing the sweet life? And this was Sa-WEET!)

The J. Cuveé 20 &  J. Brut Rosé were the first we tasted. I pre­ferred the Cuveé 20. A great exam­ple of enjoy­ing a Sparkling white as a refresh­ing apéri­tif or a fab­u­lous spe­cial occa­sion indul­gence. At $28.00 a bot­tle, it can’t be beat.

Here is an exam­ple of tast­ing notes for Sparkling wine:

The non-vintage J Cuvée 20 Brut grace­fully opens up with crisp lemon peel, hon­ey­suckle and del­i­cate yeast aro­mas. Upon entry, these notes are fol­lowed by a mix of Fuji apple, grape­fruit and a sweet hint of angel food cake. The mid-palate is inter­laced with toast, caramel and almond fla­vors. The acid­ity adds just enough live­li­ness and the cit­rus zest leads to a lin­ger­ing, warm pear and lush fin­ish. This wine pairs beau­ti­fully with a Kumamoto oys­ter topped with Tsar Nicoulai Caviar in a J Cuvée 20 mignonette.

…just to add, they did have oys­ters and caviar to pair with the wine. I passed on the oys­ters, but did try a few caviar yum­mies paired with some of the other releases ~ and they were loverly!

Are you ask­ing your­self, “Self– what is a cuveé, a brut?.” Well Self, a Cuveé can mean a cou­ple things. First– it can mean the best grape juice from the press­ing of the grape. Think Extra Vir­gin Olive oil; best of the best. First press. Sec­ondly, it can mean either or both a blend of vari­etals or vine­yards. In J.‘s case they are refer­ring to blend­ing the best fla­vors of the juice after fer­men­ta­tion from dif­fer­ent years/vintages.

The 2000 J. Vin­tage Brut is the cuveé (mix) from dif­fer­ent vari­etals from the same year/vintage. Since a “Vin­tage” wine means grape from the same vine­yard in the same year, the har­vest from that grow­ing sea­son is of extreme impor­tance and the yield is also less, ie: higher price. Here is the math: Bad cli­mate year, bad har­vest, bad taste, no wine. In the case of 2000, as Frank Sina­tra would sing, it was a very good year.

And now for the créme de la créme…1998 J. Vin­tage Brut, Late Dis­gorged!!! Dis­gorged? Could there be an uglier word to describe such a beau­ti­ful Sparkling wine? This LD (short for Late Dis­gorged for those in the know) is a Téte de Cuveé; best of the har­vest, best of the vin­tage, best of the varietals…best. Best. Best. A diva will accept noth­ing less, when she can afford it. Late Dis­gorged means that it is aged for an addi­tional year. I think they could come up with a bet­ter descrip­tive term, like Extra– Fab, but I guess the wino-philes pre­fer this exact process terminology.

Each bot­tle was an afford­able $115, if you want to splurge and still a lot less than the best or medium level Cham­pagnes. Need­less to say, we vis­ited this sta­tion in the VIP loft sev­eral times. Is there another word for more than sev­eral? Sev­er­als? You get my point.

They had delec­table Charlie’s Choco­lates, Fleur de Sel Caramels to sam­ple. These were truly divine, the best choco­late cov­ered caramels with a hint of sea salt. Salt, choco­late and caramels? Yes. Try them.

One last note of inter­est, I have saved the best for last. The owner and founder of this vine­yard is a WOMAN! Yes, a Sister-Diva, Judy Jor­dan. Let us close our eyes in a moment of Sparkling thanks to the God­desses of Wine.

And there you have it, La Dolce Diva Goes to… Sonoma. All in all, it was a very enjoy­able trip that truly filled the senses..sight, sound, taste, touch & smell. It made the wine-world much more acces­si­ble, invit­ing and under­stand­able. I hope I have imparted those feel­ings to you.

Go forth and drink wine with con­fi­dence, my Diva –Sis­ters. There is noth­ing to be scared of!

I would love to hear from you– leave a com­ment or ques­tion ~ won’t you?

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Part 1 Part 2

Turn­ing onto the Ston­estreet Win­ery Estate, you real­ize you are actu­ally in a val­ley between the Coast Range to the west and the May­a­ca­mas Moun­tains to the east. All right, I didn’t “actu­ally real­ize” I was between these moun­tain ranges. I am not known as the Geog­ra­phy Diva, I looked these facts up.  I also learned that these moun­tains ranges and val­leys were formed from a vol­canic explo­sion. The lava flowed form­ing a part of the ranges, while also spread­ing ash and min­er­als through­out Napa & Sonoma. The des­o­late soil the fiery flow left behind mil­lions of years ago, com­bined with the fog that gets trapped between these ranges and keeps the grapes cool until late in the day, causes the grapes to strug­gle for sur­vival, yield­ing smaller grapes of intense fla­vor. I guess you could say each lit­tle bunch of grapes is a like box from Tiffany’s…the best things come in small packages!

The tast­ing room was Cal­i­for­nia con­tem­po­rary set within a élite “barn” aes­thetic. As as a horse owner, I am nat­u­rally drawn to and com­forted by the sim­ple archi­tec­ture of a barn. This sim­ple archi­tec­ture sur­rounded by vine­yards is even more com­fort­ing. A girl can dream.

We were pre­sented a tast­ing flight of 3 three vineyard-designated Chardon­nays — Upper Barn Chardon­nay, Bro­ken Road Chardon­nay and Red Point Chardonnay…Oh– maybe I for­got to men­tion that Angela and Michelle were actu­ally try­ing to round out their wine col­lec­tion– so they were also in need of Chardon­nays. Evette and I were try­ing to “round” out or should I say “start” our wine col­lec­tion, so we were in need of Chardon­nays too!

The Upper Barn Chardon­nay was a bit too fruity for me. More like a Sauvi­gnon Blanc. The Red Point Chardon­nay was a bit too yeasty or dry. Noth­ing wrong with that, I was look­ing for a much more but­tery depth of fla­vor. The Bro­ken Road Chardon­nay was just right. 4 bot­tles please, thank-you.

These are my opin­ions and are cer­tain to dif­fer from an actual pro­fes­sional review. So, let’s look at  a pro­fes­sional review of The Bro­ken Road Chardon­nay from the Wine Advocate.

“… more min­er­al­ity, broad orange blos­som, nec­tarine, and guava notes, some hints of hazel­nut and brioche… very full-bodied rich­ness, and slightly more acid­ity and def­i­n­i­tion than the Red Point.” Robert M. Parker Jr., Wine Advo­cate, Decem­ber 2007

Hmmmm, I didn’t see but­tery men­tioned once. Oh well, it was yummy.

Our next stop was Stryker Sonoma. This win­ery was the Tiger Woods of winer­ies: Sporty, mod­ern, grace­ful, tal­ented and it delivered.

In com­par­i­son to the other winer­ies I have already shared with you and the ones to come, Stryker was not the most lav­ish or scenic. It was not the most expen­sive or impres­sive. Even though it was the Win­ner of the 2002 Archi­tec­tural Design Award for North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, it was not the most beau­ti­ful. Yet, the tast­ing expe­ri­ence here was the most com­fort­able and enjoy­able. Funny thing to say about stand­ing at a bar? Well, that’s just it, it felt as if you were at your favorite bar with a group of good friends, good wine and a per­son­able bar­tender that treated you like a friend instead of a pay­ing client.

Our barista pre­sented us with a list of over 40 wines we could choose to taste. Don’t be con­cerned, we were respon­si­ble Wine Divas, we selected about 8–10 dif­fer­ent wines, mixed between reds and whites. By this time, I was tak­ing small sips and only sec­ond sips of those I really liked in order to com­pare and assess.

This win­ery hap­pened to be one of Angela and Michelle’s fond­est finds on their last trip. While they were busy dis­cussing pur­chases for per­sonal con­sump­tion and gifts, Evette and I were being indoc­tri­nated into our next level of wine­hood..the pur­chase of  2, I said TWO cases of wine. And, drum roll please, we joined the Med­ley Wine Club! 3 bot­tles of the lastest releases 4 times a year. You also receive a dis­count on any other wine pur­chase you make through­out the year.

For your vini­fi­ca­tion infor­ma­tion, I will list the wines we pur­chased. I rec­om­mend you visit the wine list­ings to read more about the wines and more impor­tantly, the rec­om­men­da­tion for food pair­ings. The site it very user friendly. Here are our pur­chases: 2006 Semillon-Chardonnay: Sonoma County, 2005 San­giovese: Alexan­der Val­ley, 2006 Zinfandel’s Patty’s Patch:Alexander Val­ley, 2004 Caber­net Sauvi­gnon: Sonoma County, 2003 Cab “3”: Sonoma County. Some of these selec­tions are new releases and oth­ers are only avail­able at the vineyard.

For the grand finale of the day, we vis­ited a jewel of a vine­yard, Ferrari-Carano.

Nes­tled in a pocket, hid­den by trees, you come upon what looks like, a pri­vate Ital­ian villa. 3 guesses why I loved it…OK…you may only need 1 guess. For me — THIS — was the most impres­sive win­ery. It’s grandeur and ele­gance con­veyed the same sense of time­less­ness and beauty that you would see in pri­vate vil­las in Italy.

Before enter­ing the main grounds, there is a tran­quil gar­den with a water­fall and run­ning streams. The gar­den beds were filled with vibrant flow­ers, lush green­ery and the charm­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing  Cork Oak. Yes, cork trees. The bark is cork. They are mature enough to peel the cork off the trunk after 25 years and can be har­vested again every 10–12 years. they live for approx­i­mately 150–250 years. I bet you never gave cork much thought, did you? Well, now you can pack that lit­tle gem of use­less yet fas­ci­nat­ing infor­ma­tion away until the rare lull in your next din­ner party.

The main build­ing or hos­pi­tal­ity cen­ter known as Villa Fiore, housed 2 tast­ing rooms. The clas­sic wines were on the main level, the lim­ited releases in the cellar.

I have to say that even though it was just as grand inside, it felt more like a retail shop and much more touristy than the other winer­ies we vis­ited that day.

I also have to admit that by this time it was late in the after­noon and I was worn out from tast­ing. Yes, I said it. I was tired of tast­ing and think­ing about wine for the day. I was happy to have Angela and Michele con­tinue the tast­ing in the cel­lar while Evette and I sat out­side in the sun, enjoy­ing the fresh air and soak­ing in the beauty of the grounds.

I bought 3 bot­tles of 2005 Carneros Chardon­nay Reserve. I made the pur­chase purely on Angela and Michelle’s recommendation.

Big sigh. Done with our first day in the wine coun­try. It was a lot of fun and very edu­ca­tional. Angela did a fab­u­lous job of plan­ning and execution.

Off to Rossa’s for Pizza Mag­a­rita. I’ll just have water with mine, please.

We were picked up by Gene at 10 AM sharp. Angela had sched­uled a full day of tast­ings, so if this meant drink­ing before noon– then so be it! It had to be 5 O’clock some­where. We were to visit 7 winer­ies this day-I will take you along for the ride to the ones we loved the best.

Our first stop was Segh­e­sio. A lovely vine­yard down an olive tree lined road. We turned onto a beau­ti­ful lit­tle court­yard again lined with olive trees in addi­tion to roses. There was a huge foun­tain in front of the lovely ochre stuc­coed build­ing. I imme­di­ately felt at home — or least the place I live in my mind — as it reminded me of Italy.

I did not know what to expect. I have seen wine tast­ing on tele­vi­sion and in movies, but I wasn’t sure how out-of-my-element I would feel. Those fears were quickly assuaged as I entered the warm and invit­ing tast­ing room. The barista was as laid back California-cool as they come– with the twist of sophis­ti­ca­tion that must only come with years of dis­cussing the fine points of wine. One of the spe­cial requests we had was to sam­ple wine that were not imme­di­ately avail­able to us in our local wine shops. If were going to make the trip out there, we wanted our pur­chase to be spe­cial. Not a sim­ple bot­tle of vino that just any­one could get there hands on! Mio dio! We were assured the wine we would be sam­pling was not dis­trib­uted at retail in Geor­gia, but per­haps avail­able at fine din­ing estab­lish­ments. We could live with that. I won’t even go into the pol­i­tics (my Wine Diva Sis­ters are giv­ing a *sigh* of relief here) of now being able to ship freely into Geor­gia. Suf­fice to say, laws have passed and we now could pur­chase to our lit­tle hearts content.

Tummy up to the bar, we were given a fresh wine glass to begin the fes­tiv­i­ties. Angela and Michelle were in search of the per­fect Pinot Noir, so we started with the reds. I won’t give you a detailed account of every sip, how­ever, I will say that a wine tast­ing is a lovely way to start the day! Evette and I were pur­chas­ing wine together, we weren’t expe­ri­enced enough to buy by the case as our Wine Diva sis­ters were doing, but we did acquire a bot­tle of a full-bodied Petite Sirah (how often do you use full-bodied and petite together in a sen­tence? Maybe when describ­ing a Tit­ian or a Rubens painting…but I digress.) As I was say­ing, we acquired a 2003 San Lorenzo Petite Sirah and a pep­pery 2005 Cortina Zin­fan­del. Baby steps..onward.

Wind­ing down the vine­yard lined roads to our next stop at Ston­estreet Wines was like step­ping into a charm­ing pas­toral land­scape, except this land­scape meant busi­ness. These grapes meant dol­lar signs.  At the head of each sec­tion of grapevines was a sign that either stated the grape (vari­etal) or the region (appel­la­tion.) I found it inter­est­ing that there were also names of winer­ies on signs in numer­ous vine­yards through­out the region claim­ing own­er­ship of those grapes. I learned that winer­ies often owned or leased land in dif­fer­ent appel­la­tions in order to allow their winer­ies a more var­ied selec­tion and depth of fla­vor within their wine offer­ings. They may also con­tract the har­vest or pur­chase grapes from other vine­yards. Again, this is to allow the wine­maker to pro­duce the fla­vor of wine to their lik­ing. It isn’t just a mat­ter or putting a bunch or grapes in a pot and wait for them to stew. No, it is much more dif­fi­cult than that! And for the price of some wines, I would hope so. To clar­ify, a won­der­fully jammy, spicy Zin­fan­del may con­tain 85% Zin­fan­del, 11% Petite Sirah, 4% Carig­nane. All these vari­etals may not be avail­able on the winer­ies own land. If all the grapes are har­vested from the winer­ies estate owned land, the label will state the wine as Estate Grown or Estate Vine­yard or sim­i­lar descriptors.

As you can see, the winemaker’s palette is molto impor­tanté. Wine­mak­ing or vinefi­ca­tion is big busi­ness. Yet one could also call it an art.

…to be continued.

Are you enjoy­ing this visit to Sonoma? Why don’t you share your thoughts by leav­ing a comment?

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Ciao, my lit­tle chick­adees, just back from a long week­end in Sonoma Val­ley. Can you think of any­thing more deca­dent than an entire sec­tion of the coun­try reserved for the pure plea­sure of lov­ingly nur­tur­ing the suc­cu­lent nec­tar of the gods-WINE! Talk about The Sweet Life!

As you can see from the pic­ture above, it was a Wine Diva Week­end! Thank my lucky grapes that my friends Angela and Michelle were expe­ri­enced wine coun­try pros. My dear diva-sister, Evette, and I sim­ply had to fol­low their lead. And lead they did!

Our first full day was spent being chauf­feured  by own our per­sonal wine tour guide, Gene War­ren of Healds­burg Win­ery Tours. With Angela’s cherry-picked itin­er­ary of winer­ies in vary­ing appel­la­tions and vari­etals there was no way we could have any­thing less than a wine­tas­tic day.

Did I lose you with my wine-speak of appel­la­tions and vari­etals? Well, it is like speak­ing another lan­guage. One in which I hope to become flu­ent. In Cal­i­for­nia, appel­la­tions mean a strictly defined geo­graphic area, like Drycreek or Russ­ian River Val­ley. Vari­etal means the type of grape from which the wine is made-Cabernet Sauvi­gnon, Pinot Noir, Chardon­nay, etc.

For those of you that have not had the plea­sure of vis­it­ing the wine coun­try, allow me to enlighten you fur­ther with my newly found exper­tise. Ahemmmm.…

I learned through­out the day that the tast­ing process itself is very casual. There will be some type of walk-up bar or counter that you stand at while you take notes on a pre-printed sheet the win­ery pro­vides with list of wines being offered. If the vine­yard pro­duces dif­fer­ent vari­etals, the barista (wine-pouring per­son, I “bor­rowed” this term from Star­bucks) will ask what you are inter­ested in tast­ing from the selec­tion they have avail­able. Some­times there is a set list that they pour from. You may taste one or all, it is up to you.

At most tast­ing rooms you are given a glass that will be used for the entire tast­ing. You are poured a care­fully mea­sured 1oz. of wine. That is where the drama begins! You can­not help dra­ma­tiz­ing comic exaltation’s about the nose, the bou­quet, the legs of this fab­u­lous wine! Then you begin to really enjoy the process.

Just like the 4c’sof buy­ing a dia­mond, there are 5s’s of tast­ing wine: See, Swirl, Sniff, Sip, Savor. I won’t go into the com­plex wine-speak def­i­n­i­tion of each of these terms, mainly because I don’t under­stand. Here’s all you need to know: Unless it is brown– don’t worry– it is prob­a­bly drink­able. You should swirl your glass so that the wine is exposed to the air and the wine becomes more full-bodied or fla­vor­ful. Sniff or inhale the aroma of the grape, the bou­quet which reflects the wine-making process such as the smell of oak, and together these are the nose of the wine. Only a true wineiac would be able to really define the dif­fer­ence, just says it smells good. How­ever, inhal­ing the aroma, bou­quet, what­ever, really does enhance the fla­vor of the wine. Sip, yes sip just a bit. No need to gulp and swish. Sip and hold then…savor. you will hope­fully enjoy the dif­fer­ent lay­ers of the taste. A bal­anced wine will fill your mouth with fla­vor you might describe as pep­pery, spicy, jammy, fruity, yeasty (bub­bly), earthy, dry, nutty, but­tery, flat, watery etc. Of course, some of these words (the good ones) will be on the descrip­tive sheets you are pro­vided with..power of sug­ges­tion or just the mat­u­ra­tion of your palette? Hmmmmm…

There’s usu­ally a stain­less ves­sel and a pitcher of water on the bar. Once you fin­ish tast­ing the first wine, you may spit out what is in your mouth into a stain­less ves­sel (Yes– spit. I am proud to say none of the Divas spat.), you may fin­ish (swal­low) the 1 oz. ration, or pour it out into the stain­less ves­sel. The water is to rinse out your glass in between varietals.

Other vine­yards may present you with a tast­ing flight, which, in this casual sce­nario, is from 3–4 glasses from the same vine­yard and a related cat­e­gory of wines. For instance, all whites, all Chardon­nays, all reds, Pinots or Caber­nets, etc. The glasses are often placed on top of a sheet of paper which iden­ti­fies each wine and gives some infor­ma­tion about it. This for­mat allows tasters to com­pare and con­trast dif­fer­ent wines. If you are only given 1 glass but wish to com­pare wines-all you have to do is ask and the barista will gladly pro­vide a fresh glass and a new 1oz. pour of the requested wine for comparison.

These tast­ings some times come with a fee, some­times about $5.00 some­times $10–15. Usu­ally this fee will be applied to any wine pur­chase you make.

…to be con­tin­ued tomorrow.

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Lemon Rasp­berry Tiramisu: Recipe by mcat49

Have you heard about BakeSpace.com? It is sim­ply the hippest cucina around! While other recipe based sites can be as dry as day old bread, Bake Space is a place where you “come for the food and stay for the conversation.”

Inno­v­a­tive and fun, it is a social net­work of food enthu­si­asts din­ing and dish­ing about their favorite food, recipes, tech­niques, books and any­thing food related.

Easy and inter­ac­tive, you’ll soon be click­ing away like a kid in a candy store. The metro-retro fea­tures and lay­out will imme­di­ately inspire and com­fort you. No high­brow chefs cluck­ing their tongue at you going on about mise en place.

Instead there’s the feel­ing of sit­ting around your kitchen counter with a group of friends, sip­ping a glass of vino, munch­ing on bruschetta, dis­cussing the best way to make cheese­cake, what is the newest tiramisu, should I buy Le Crue­set or stainless?

As Bake Space says them­selves, “Gath­er­ing in the kitchen is a uniquely social tra­di­tion that con­nects peo­ple from all walks of life. That’s because the kitchen is where we go when we’re hun­gry… not just for food, but for friends, fam­ily and great con­ver­sa­tion.“

A Diva never thought recipe –swap­ping could be so fun!