Author: Amy Corron Power

  • Customer Service: A Tale of Two Bartenders

    Bartender Fail: A good bartender, waitperson or sommelier knows that he’s not doing the customers “a favor” to serve them, but that they’re doing him a favor by being there. That but for the customers, he would have no job. And in today’s economy, especially, there are 10 people just waiting to take his job.

  • Special Discount for Another Wine Blog Readers

    Since wine can be considered a luxury (we treat it a staple in our house — but that’s because Joe is a wino, or claims to be one anyway), it’s a great thing when a winery offers a discount to our readers. And the good folks of Anaba have done just that. We’re not receiving any money from Anaba to pass this along, we just thought it would be great for our readers to experience their wines.

  • Another Wine Byte 8: Any Port in the Storm

    Once home, we began unpacking various wine club shipments that had arrived in our absence. Joe’s mom noticed a bottle of port, and asked “What do you do with port?” Joe pointed to the 10 lb. bar ofGuittard chocolate he got me for Valentine’s Day, and we proceeded to open a bottle of Frog’s Tooth Tawny Portoad, we picked up in Murphys during our fabulous visit to Twisted Oak Winery. All for the sake of teaching Joe’s mom a little about port, and chocolate, of course.

  • Another Wine Byte 7: You Say Meritage…

    So many people want to put an implied French pronunciation on the word “Meritage.” And it’s always fun when it’s someone acting like a know-it-all. What many don’t know is that the word “Meritage” is a word used to distinguish that are made in the style of red Bordeaux but without infringing on that region’s legally protected designation of origin.

  • Slaked

    She exhales and her scent fills the air. You let her breathe; but are poised, ready to slake your thirst.

  • Please Don’t Spill Burgundy on My Brassiere

    Given that the TSA has decided we can no longer carry on liquids over 3 ounces and they must fit into one little quart-sized bag and we tend to have enough hair care products to max that out, what are we to do if we find some fabulous wine that we want to enjoy at a later date, in the comfort of our own home?

  • Toasting my Father, Six Months After Ike

    We went down to Kemah today to buy some seafood to go with a white wine we planned to drink for Open That Bottle Night and Twitter Taste Live. I’d heard it was bad. Hurricane Ike. Direct hit. I hadn’t gone anywhere near there in the daylight since the storm because I just didn’t want to see all the devastation. But since it’d been nearly six months, we thought perhaps our favorite place “Rose’s Seafood” would be open.

  • Can a Pretty Bottle Improve Plonk?

    Can Pretty Improve Plonk? Now while the attractiveness of the wine maker or the person pouring the wine might not, on its own, make one more inclined to give the wine a positive review, I think it might cause the taster to want to rate the wine more highly. Or for someone who prides himself on being completely unbiased towards a wine from a good-looking wine maker, that he might want to judge a wine more harshly when poured by a young, attractive pourer with very little wine knowledge to impart.

  • To Hell with States’ Rights! – Part I

    To Hell with States’ Rights! – Part I

    There are a number of states that make it next to impossible for a consumer to get wine direct-shipped to her. Most of these laws effectively protect the three-tiered system, that takes wine from the winery, to the distributor, to the retail establishment. And I would argue that there is a pretty strong lobby that seeks protectionism for its state-run wineries, and its distribution system.

  • Another Wine Byte 6: Even Wine Gets Stressed!

    Bottle shock can result from a wine’s over-oxidation or if sulfur dioxide was added during the bottling process. The effect on the wine is a flatness of aroma and flavor, sometimes accompanied by an unpleasant odor. It can also occur when your wine becomes stressed from the excessive jostling of the bottles during shipping, especially if the bottles travel from Califonria Wine Country to parts south and southwest on a long circuitous journey in an un-air-conditioned brown truck in the middle of the summer. Most of the time, it is a temporary condition.