My first encounter with Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne Vertical was in San Francisco in 2008, at the La Paulée event hosted by Daniel Johnnes. At these evening events, everyone comes together to pop corks, share bottles and really, to drink the best stuff they can find. You submit your lot of goods at the “wine check” at the front door and prepare to do battle with sobriety…a lesson in futility.

I have always been a Zinfandel fan, I like juicy and caressing wines that are always friendly and always willing to have fun. Zinfandel will always answer your phone calls and it will always let you in when you show up unannounced. It’s a good friend to have. At a recent dinner with Robert Biale, I got a little inside info on what makes this iconic Zinfandel producer tick.

BR: What makes Zinfandel so special?

I had an amazing chance to dine with Dr. Antonini at Vinroom in Calgary and took the opportunity to get in some Q&A with the global consultant. Dr. Antonini consults for wineries in Tuscany, Argentina, South Africa, Uruguay, Australia, Spain and Chile. He is a founding partner of Altos Las Hormigas in Argentina and he runs his family estate, Poggiotondo in Tuscany.

BR: What new projects are you involved with right now?

Guns and Tongues

It is the ish of delish 


That I seek for my mouth 


The fruit that I squish


From the slope from the south

My mouth is wanting 


The liquid it adorns


This glass comes the haunting


From my head the horns

It comes from inside


This yearning for ish


My time I cannot bide


Hot inside feverish

More is more 


Is what I crave 


Quite the lore 
I must be brave

Brimming with juice


I fall to the floor 


My composure is loose

Despite my habitual employment within restaurants I haven't worked a New Year's Eve (NYE) in about four years.  Beautiful luck and fanciful timing I suppose have played a roll in this somewhat freeing escape from a busy restaurant holiday evening.  As it has worked out, until this year, the celebrated event has fallen on evenings which were not my normal nights to work (awesome); however this year it fell smack on a Thursday, Bradley's night of the week to work at Divino (blasted).  It's not that I don't like working holidays, I do, they tend to be spirited and well enthused and carry a

The 1999 vintage of Barolo has the middle child syndrome.  Stuck in the middle of a string of excellent and diverse vintages, the 1999's got a polite hand on the head before being shuffled out of the kitchen to the back yard where the dog lay,  awaiting a comrade.

I have over the last week drunk a lot of wonderful things with birds, in various locations, doing various things. It had been some time since I sat down with a bird and had an evening of good times, an evening filled with polite conversation and delicious wine.  Or for that matter an evening that was saturated with romance and gentle flirtations. Or even an evening filled with business and future developments and talks of the nows-and-the-maybes. Not even an evening spent lying around the house eating, drinking and reading the this-and-thats.

The origins of Hot Potato are not necessarily illustrious, nor dignified, nor really even disposed to anything beneficial when one is pressed to consider their virtue.  In fact, these so-called origins of Hot Potato are almost certainly steeped in nothing more than pouty-red-stained-lips and a real or imagined lack of glassware or otherwise drinking vessel. This assumption is on my behalf and is all I can offer as I can't really say for sure why or how this evil little activity came to be.