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Dirt Candy doesn’t have much room to store cases of wine, so rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and all the rest of the usual suspects I thought I’d make up a wine list of the strangest and most unusual wines I could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.
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I love serving challenging wines you won’t find anywhere else in the city. But some of them are so amazing, so unorthodox, and so intense that I only serve them in secret. Well, now the secret’s out. There’s one wine so awesome and so strange that I haven’t put it on the list, but if a customer asks for something out of the ordinary I pour them a glass.
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Dirt Candy doesn’t have much room to store cases of wine, so rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and all the rest of the usual suspects I thought I’d make up a wine list of the strangest and most unusual wines I could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.
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One of the best books I own is my comprehensive, opinionated, snippy, but deeply educational Oxford Companion to Wine. But sometimes even it doesn’t have much to say about certain bottle of booze, like when I look up Coda di Volpe.
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The entire entry reads “Ancient, full-bodied white grape grown near Naples in Campania.” That’s it?!? Clearly there’s more to be said for my favorite go-to wine. Click on through, because I’m going to say it.
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Dirt Candy doesn’t have much room to store cases of wine, so rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and all the rest of the usual suspects I thought I’d make up a wine list of the strangest and most unusual wines I could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.
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Mention Rioja wine and the first thing people think of is a red from Spain’s Rioja region. Fair enough. The standard Rioja everyone imagines is a blend of Tempranillo grapes with maybe some Garnacha or even the more exotic Graciano if you’re feeling wild and crazy, but the truth is that there are 70 grape varieties in Rioja, and the one most often described as a “hidden gem” is the recently rediscovered Maturana. And that’s what this wine is: 100%, straight-up, unblended Maturana grapes. And it’s pretty great.
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Dirt Candy doesn’t have much room to store cases of wine, so rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and all the rest of the usual suspects I thought I’d make up a wine list of the strangest and most unusual wines I could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.
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Who doesn’t love The Brady Bunch? When Mike Brady marries Carol Ann Martin each one brings three children to the family. Mike brings three boys: Greg, Peter, and Bobby. Carol brings three girls: Marcia, Jan, and Cindy. They don’t take over the world or go to wizard school. There are no evil twins, amnesia, car accidents, or murder attempts. The most drama the show ever unleashed is when they go to Hawaii and Greg has a surfing accident thanks to a cursed Tiki, or when Jan thinks she’s allergic to their beloved dog, Tiger. The reason I (and I think other people) kept watching them was their blended family. They had different parents, but they all grew up together and there was no question that they were brothers and sisters, no matter what biology said. And that’s the story of the new Austrian wine on my list: Neumeister Gemischter Satz.
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Although my husband’s hometown of Charleston, SC now features so many breweries that on a recent trip we found growlers and taps in a very sketchy mini-mart in a lousy part of town, the first of these is Palmetto Brewery. Who are they? Let them tell it in their own words:
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“Palmetto Brewery first served Charleston’s thirst in the 1850′s. Brewed through the ‘War of Northern Aggression,’ the earthquake of 886, a major hurricane, and into the turn of the century, but failed to survive prohibition. We revived the tradition in 1993, becoming the first brewery to operate in South Carolina since Prohibition. Our beer is truly handcrafted in small batches in the historic city of Charleston.”
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Unavailable outside of South Carolina, you’ll find it all over the place when you’re in Charleston. Fortunately for me, one of the founders of the brewery is a fan of Dirt Candy and a really good friend and Palmetto gave me a ton of their beer for the cookbook signing in Charleston.
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Dirt Candy doesn’t have much room to store cases of wine, so rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and all the rest of the usual suspects I thought I’d make up a wine list of the strangest and most unusual wines I could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.
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If there’s one wine that doesn’t get any respect, it’s Grignolino. A curiosity from Italy’s northern Piedmont region, it’s not very popular and it’s mostly grown to provide a young wine that can be drunk while people wait for their more important wines to mature. It’s the party wine of the Piedmont, and it’s full of pips, which is where it got its name (Grignolino means “many pips”), but it’s also a really surprising wine I’d never heard of before.
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Dirt Candy doesn’t have much room to store cases of wine, so rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and all the rest of the usual suspects I thought I’d make up a wine list of the strangest and most unusual wines I could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.
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One thing I’ve learned as the keeper of the Dirt Candy Wine Zoo is that if I see a Greek wine, I’m going to give it a chance. Some of the most surprising wines I’ve tasted over the past 3 years have been Greek, and while the Dirt Candy wine list was getting a bit mainstream for a while there, with the advent of the Touch of Classe and now this Malagousia from the Zafeirakis winery in Greece, we’re back to full-on freak status.
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Have you ever had wine that tastes like fresh, first pressing, extra virgin olive oil? A wine so silken and heavy it just slides down your throat like a golden draught of honey? No? Then you should try this one.
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We don’t have much room to store cases of wine, so rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and the rest of the usual suspects we thought we’d make up a wine list of the strangest and most unusual wines we could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.
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I serve a lot of wine at Dirt Candy and all of it comes with a story. But A Touch of Classe is the most personal wine I serve.
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Sure, it’s organic. Sure, it’s natural. But there’s more to it than that.
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We don’t have much room to store cases of wine, so rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and the rest of the usual suspects we thought we’d make up a wine list of the strangest and most unusual wines we could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.
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Dirt Candy has served Nebbiolo wines before but this one has to be the most sophisticated that’s ever crossed my path. The Botonero Nebbiolo from the Mamete Prevostini winery is a smooth, silky Nebbiolo that swishes into your mouth in a velvet smoking jacket and then lounges around eating Turkish Delight and puffing on its hookah. It’s swank!
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As swank as this guy.
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You’d never guess that it’s made from one of the oldest grapes in the world, but it’s immediately apparent after one taste that it’s a wine that doesn’t get served outside of Italy too much. Mostly because the rest of the world is far too gauche for a wine this sophisticated.
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We don’t have much room to store cases of wine, so rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and the rest of the usual suspects we thought we’d make up a wine list of the strangest and most unusual wines we could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.
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One thing I’ve learned at Dirt Candy is that if a wine is from Greece, I’ll always give it the benefit of the doubt. Greek wines don’t have the same classy reputation that Italian or French wines do, but some of the most berserk bottles I’ve tried have hailed from the cradle of democracy itself. The latest addition to Dirt Candy’s exotic wine zoo is Nemea Aivalis 2010.
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This is a biodynamic, organic wine that is grown on a teeny tiny family vineyard where they torture their vines and give them horrible lives – depriving them of food and warmth and love – whenever possible, all in the name of developing flavor. The land has been in the Aivalis family for four generations and currently the winery is the personal vision of the larger-than-life Christos Aivalis.
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