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James Suckling's Blog Archives

November 2007


Beauty and the Beast: Amazing Taylor Vintage Port Tasting

I sometimes just can’t understand why more people don’t get the fantastic quality of aged vintage Port. You hear about this Bordeaux from 1945 or 1982 or that Burgundy from 1959 or 1990 but Port? Nada. Niente. Well, it ain’t right . Read more


Mozza and Comme Ça Are More Than Comme Ça ...

We Americans can do some things in the restaurants as well or even better than the Europeans. In fact, we can sometimes beat them at their own game.

I was thinking of that following a couple of dinners in two hot new restaurants in Los Angeles, Osteria Mozza and Comme Ça. Read more


Thanksgiving with Jamie and Friends

I hope you had a beautiful Thanksgiving. I sort of celebrated. I guess I have been out of America for Thanksgiving for too long. I lost the tradition while I was living in London when I was married. My ex-wife was English so it didn’t make a lot of sense. Read more


The Age of Cervaro

It was one of the most memorable vertical tastings I have been to in Italy recently. Renzo Cotarella, the technical head for Antinori, invited me to taste every vintage ever made of Cervaro, the stylish white from the Antinoris' wine estate in Umbria, Castello della Sala. Read more


Truffle Tales

Sometimes I have to wonder what all the fuss is about with white truffles. Yes, the ultra-expensive fungi from Italy. Don’t get me wrong. They smell absolutely decadent and seductive, and shaving them on to many different things is as much fun as eating them. Read more


Classic Beauty of Cheval-Blanc

Cheval-Blanc has a unique style. It’s a wine that really has somewhereness to it, for lack of a better phrase. Or it is what the French say, “a wine from great terroir.” I love the perfumed and aromatic quality of the wine and its silky, refined texture. Read more


Kobe Steaks, Roasted Monkfish and Yquem?

It¹s sort of weird that Pierre Lurton, the president of Château d'Yquem, said that his favorite dish with old bottles of his famous sweet wine is sweetbreads (riz de veau). He said that he particularly likes a slightly drier Yquem, like 1975, with the well-known offal. Read more


Agony and the Ecstasy

The Chateau d’Yquem tasting I blogged about yesterday actually started Saturday night at Chinois on Main, Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant in Santa Monica. There were 13 different vintages of the legendary sweet wine with three French-Chinese fusion dishes for dinner. Read more


Nectar of the Gods

It was one of the most magnificent tastings of my life. Yesterday I had the amazing fortune to taste 15 vintages of the legendary sweet wine producer Chateau d'Yquem in Beverly Hills with a couple dozen wine collectors and wine merchants, at Wolfgang Puck's Spago restaurant. Read more


The Flip Side of Restaurant Wine Service in NYC

A couple of days after the BLT Steak wine debacle, I went to Sunday lunch with some friends at Union Square Café in New York City. I used to go there all the time in the early 1990s, but I had not been back in years. I heard that they had a good Italian wine list, doing special verticals of different producers, so I wanted to check it out. Read more



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