My wines/Thanksgiving 2009

Good evening, hope your ready for the weekend!

My wines for the holiday weekend:

1994 George Latour BV

2000 Paradigm

2004 Hope & Grace Pinot

2004 Freeman Wines

Champagnes

1990 Krug

1996 Bollinger Grand Annee

1996 Louise by Pommery

1985 Salon

a big Thursday and Friday-- hope you have a special holiday weekend

Many thanks to my friends and readers!

Yum Yum, big Saturday!

When it is good friends, business associates and wine, good food, what a great evening. Had one of those and the ones were all incredible.

Shafer Hillside Select, 1998 Cab, not sure it could have got any better. But what a great bottle of wine, shared with wine novices and cork dorks together!

The opener was Sonoma-Cutrer Les Pierres 2005, a great balanced white wine goes with anything and just great in everything. I always thought their complexity in whites was worth it. But last night, damm fine!

OK, a tad bit later will send some great Thanksgiving wines for you to have on the table to drink!

The conversation was all about the ad business and how challenging it is right now--but the place we all had dinner was packed, so hmmmm!

Took my MBA class  (USF) for a bit of retail therapy and an academic experience in Union Square San Francisco--the 25 students had their eyes open, always a great Saturday, what a hands on way of truly seeing marketing by walking around.

Lots of sales, truly deep discounts, no bags bad service and hell it isn't even Black Friday!

Cheers!

The 25 Hour Day

One day a year, we get that extra hour, that time to reflect, sleep and think about something/nothing.

For me it has been catching up on some great wine blogs. My friend Steven Comfort just got the word that his blog, was one of the Google Top 100 wine blogs. Congrats. A true friend, great wine geek and guy, his blog is such good reading and he makes a hell of a pinot!

Tuesday is a very special day in our country- the election finally, my absentee ballot took me some 20 minutes to finish, so many ballot propositions, but will be good, what will you be drinking, I am opening Diamond Creek 1997 Volcanic, rich and full-bodied and will go down to wire in good taste and some of the questions in California will be just like that, down to the wire.

Thanksgiving is upon us, what are you suggestions for your holiday wines, send along and I will post.

Good reading:  Paul Arden, It's Not How Good You Are, its How good you want to be.  Funny solid tome that gets you thinking.

Make sure you vote,  drink good wine and check out this wine blog: Chateau Petrogasm.  Good cool and interesting reading.

A Pinot Crazed time

Been a while, i know, but in this interim, been doing a lot of reading, traveling and enjoying fine wines.

Well for the wines, it has mostly been Pinot: Freeman (so yummy!), Williams-Selyan 2000 Russian River, Rochioloi (so classic) and a real sleeper, CASE by Robert Talbott (1999), yes all of his wines are named after children and family, go figure!

If you really want a good meal, get a pizza and a bottle of Freeman.

Hits the spot, even from a decent pizza, just so fun and good!

As to a book or two, let me suggest Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery's Do You Matter: How Great Design will make people love your company.

A great article from the October Harvard Business Review should be on your reading as well

"The Contribution revolution: Letting Volunteers Build your Business" by Scott Cook, yes the same Scott Cook from Intuit.

My friend Eric Porres sent me a great quote that I will end up, on this day of 25 hours:

"Bottles of wine aren't like paintings. At some point, you have to consume them. The object of life is to die with no bottles in your cellar. To drink your last bottle of wine and to go to sleep that night and not wake up."   Jay McInerney.

Have a great 25 hour day! November 2,