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Proof Positive, But Not Perfect
Recently Gabriele and I had dinner at Proof in downtown Washington. It’s a stylish, wine-centric hot spot that has garnered a lot of praise in the last two years, including a “100 Best Restaurants”...
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Robert Parker Makes Asian Pivot
Huge news in the wine world broke yesterday. Robert Parker, founder of the Wine Advocate and the world’s most influential wine critic, announced plans to sell a portion of the business to three unnamed...
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Holiday Wine Recommendations
WashingtonExec published my December Wine and Dine column today. I share some proven holiday wine performers from my Christmases past. If you’re scrambling to finish your holiday preparations and need...
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My Last WordPress.com Annual Traffic Report
Merry New Year to all! Yesterday I received what will be my last WordPress.com annual traffic report, since I moved this site to chrisparente.com in early October of this year. It’s a good looking...
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A Virtuous Meal in Old Town Alexandria
My latest Wine and Dine column published today in WashingtonExec magazine. It’s a review of Virtue Feed and Grain, the latest Cathal and Mechelle Armstrong restaurant in Old Town, Alexandria. Virtue...
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Boomers and Bacchus in the U.S.
Joe Roberts has a good story this week at 1WineDude that mixes wine, economics, demographics and a failure to adopt social media marketing. Add these elements up, and he predicts hard times for the...
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Review of the Curious Grape in Arlington, Virginia
My latest WashingtonExec Wine and Dine column published today. It features my review of the Curious Grape, in the Shirlington area of Arlington, VA. The Curious Grape is a combination wine shop and...
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Ravenswood Zinfandel — The Good Stuff
Last year my wife Gabriele and I visited Sonoma, and enjoyed a number of excellent Zinfandels. A number of those Zinfandels were from Ravenswood, which is a well known name for Zinfandel but doesn’t...
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Wine Dinners — Good Times and Good Value
My March Wine and Dine column published today in WashingtonExec magazine. My focus this month is wine dinners, and in particular one we attended that featured the wines of Holloran Vineyards. The...
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Another Viognier Taste Test
Last year I wrote about the white varietal Viognier, spurred by my Mom drinking a favorite of hers over the holidays. It was from Bonterra in California, and we taste tested it against two French...
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Punchdown Interview with Gary Vaynerchuk
One of the wine bloggers I follow is Joe Roberts, of 1WineDude. Together with Tara O’Leary, aka the Wine Passionista, he has launched a video series interviewing major influencers in the world of wine....
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Deciphering the Wines of Tuscany
My latest Wine and Dine column published today in WashingtonExec. I take a shot at deciphering Italian wine by explaining Italian classifications. The piece also shares my review of some good Tuscan...
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American Pinot Noir
My latest wine column published in WashingtonExec yesterday. I look at American Pinot Noir and how over the past decade a bigger style of the varietal has become popular. A thank you to Jeff Stewart,...
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Vacation Wine Review
Gabriele and I are just back from a very relaxing Memorial week off in Charleston, South Carolina. We did all the touristy things like museums, Fort Sumpter and the U.S.S. Yorktown. We also enjoyed...
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Premium Cabernet Sauvignon Showdown
As readers of this site know, I don’t think you need to pay a lot for a good wine experience. The definition of “a lot” can differ of course. My definition of that term translates into spending $20-30...
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Washington Post Wine Club Interview
Today WashingtonExec published my latest Wine and Dine column. Last month the Washington Post jumped into the wine business with a new wine club offering. The combination was intriguing, but it wasn’t...
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Can an Equation Measure Wine Value?
How do you get good value from the wine you buy? It’s a very natural question that many people have asked me. It’s also a very subjective question with no hard and fast answer. That said, the...
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The Demographics of U.S. Wine Consumption
This February I wrote a piece that looked at wine purchases in 2012 by age group. Last week Gallup came out with some new numbers on U.S. wine consumption. As is often the case with surveys, any...
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Italian Red Winners
I last wrote about Italian wine for my April WashingtonExec column. Since then I’ve enjoyed some new Italian red winners that I talk about below. I wrote in April about how Italian wine can be hard to...
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Wine and New gTLDs — Do They Go Well Together?
This week I saw an article in Decanter via Nick Stephens’ Bordeaux Undiscovered site. The story combined two things I write about here – wine and new generic top level domains, or gTLDs. I last...
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