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I'm heading to Europe tomorrow and it's a funny thing over there in that there are no wine bars. There are cafes that serve wine and beer and whatever else. The concept of just a wine bar is quite unnecessary. You just drink wine when you're out or you drink beer. No need to be all uppity about it.       San Francisco could learn something from this as the concept of the wine bar is simply out of control. I mean, I love 'em; these wine bars. I love wine and I love having the ability to go out and have good wine at a bar instead of having to pay $8 for a glass of wine from a $4 Trader Joe's bottle like how it used to be five years ago. But, people seem to have gotten addicted to a good thing and have made it the new, "it" venue. So naturally along with this comes perversion of the original intent.       We have now seen an overabundant use of the word, "and" so that some place that is actually something else can get in on the wine bar vibe by being something like, "Restaurant and Wine Bar" or "Wine Bar and Massage Parlor", the former example being just the least bit more common. And while this would be fine if there was a wine bar component to these places, it's just shoddy marketing glitz that might lure in a sucker or two. To illustrate my point, here are a few examples of "Wine Bars" as listed on Yelp:              Amelie - Yes, it's a wine bar, but it's a pretty rotten scene. Just a lot of striped shirts crowding the joint at any given moment.       William Cross Wine Merchants & Wine Bar - A good example of the overused 'and'. This is a wine store and not a wine bar.       The Hidden Vine - Pure wine bar. It's changed owners in the last couple of months, so we'll see how things go.       Yield Wine Bar - Another pure wine bar. The staff are quite helpful and the selection is okay, but the hard floors make it pretty noisy and it's really, really far away in the Dogpatch.       Hotel Biron - Another example of only a wine bar. It's a decent place, but as it gets crowded, any sense of intimacy goes away and the crowd gets pretty tough to deal with.       Swirl on Castro - Another one of the wine stores trying to pose as a wine bar. yeah, there's a "bar" in the back, but you aren't going to sit around and sip here. Plus it closes at 9. What bar closes at 9?       Cafe Meuse - Nearly a wine bar and nearly not. It's straddling a tough line that they should walk one way or the other on and be just be a wine bar or just be a small restaurant.       Nua Restaurant & Wine Bar - The guys who run it are cool and they have a very good wine list, but really, they are purely a restaurant. Sitting around drinking wine in there feels like you've forgotten to order your main course.       Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant - There will be people sitting around sipping wine sometimes, but this is really a store.       Bacchus Wine Bar - Super cool, but super small. If you're one of the lucky 12 people at the bar that it seems the place can hold at any one time, then count yourself lucky. Definitely a pure wine bar.       The Alembic - I have no idea how this Haight bar is in the list of wine bars. It's just a bar bar that has some additional wine. If you want to go this route, then I'd recommend Rye on Geary which has a decent wine selection surprising.       Eos Restaurant & Wine Bar - Ha ha, nice try. Just a restaurant.       Dell'Uva - Hmm, I guess it's something of a wine bar, but it's like a sport wine bar. I hate to say it, but it's probably more of a wine bar than Nua across the street, but I'd choose Nua any day.       1550 Hyde Cafe & Wine Bar - Again, just a restaurant.       Bar Tartine - Wha? You gotta be kidding me. Restaurant.       Cav Wine Bar and Kitchen - A wine bar that steps deeply in to be a scene place that is more restaurant. Still, they have a very interesting wine list.       Bacar Restaurant & Wine Salon - Restaurant and a big one at that.       Nectar Wine Lounge - Definitely a wine bar and pretty descent despite being in the Marina.       District - Yeah, it's a massive wine bar, but no where anyone I know would want to go. Just a meat market that serves wine.       Cafe Royale - I happen to quite like Royale, but it is leaning much more towards being just a local joint than wine bar, but I agree the case could be made for calling it a wine bar, especially if they punch up their wine selection a great deal.       London Wine Bar - An old school spot that is definitely a wine bar, but not one that's high on my list as their wine selection isn't tremendously amazing.       Annie's Bistro - This is a restaurant and this classification is so ridiculous, there must be some mistake here.              So, that's a shot list and while you may or may not agree with my opinion, you can see that the wine bar phenomenon is pretty widespread across San Francisco. In one day, I am going to look forward to having a 1€ glass of wine in Madrid and any number of cute bars and cafes.

Obviously, wine can cost a fortune, but usually is doesn't have to. After all, a great many of us know Two Buck Chuck and find it can be tolerable at times (usually after you've had a $20 bottle to start). I find that there is a great deal of satisfaction in finding a $5 that's really good though. Of course, it can be equally satisfying to drink the $100 a bottle level of wine and just enjoy it like I did the one and only time I had a bottle of Rubicon from Rubicon Winery.       I do have a bit issue in drinking expensive wine because while it tastes great and is incredibly enjoyable at the time you drink it, there is always the cost hangover from it, which is why we currently have a bottle of sweet wine sitting the fridge, waiting for the right moment to drink. I might add that this is a 200ml bottle (about 1/4 of a normal bottle) of wine. I love sweet wine, having gained a real appreciation for it in Spain last year and this is a bottle from my cousin's neighbor at Vehovar, which is a great little winery in Slovenia. So why does it sit around? Cost and the fact we simply can't replace it once it's gone, that's why.       Okay, so this bottle is 40 Euros for 200ml.       That makes it 200 Euros for 1 liter.       There is $1.51 to 1 Euro at the moment, so that makes it $302 a liter.       There are 33.8 ounces to the liter, so this is $8.93 per ounce.       This is a bit less than half the cost of silver per ounce, which, if this wine were a metal would make it a precious metal in my book. So, while it's nowhere as expensive as gold per ounce, you can see my hesitation in drinking it as it will be the most expensive wine I've ever had once I do drink it.       While this gives me pause and I've already tasted the wine before, at some point soon the plunge will just be taken to down it because it was after all a gift and I'm just starting to be a bit Dutch at this point in not drinking it yet.

Fresh on the tail of my Top 5 Croatian Reds, I thought it would be timely to mention my favorite whites for the year. While solidly a red drinker, I was shown the glory of being that is the white wine in the Mediterranean, where even the Chardonnay tastes good (no idea what they do to crap it up in California). These may not be whites for white lovers, but at the very least, they're damned fine wines:              5. Pošip Čara - Marko Polo       Pošip is the primary grape of Korčula and for a reason. They do it very well there. Even though this is from a large producer, it's still a very tasty and mild white that can be enjoyed anytime despite the cheesy name.              4. Demian - Malvazija       In the south of Istria, they make mighty fine wines, despite the shafting they get from the establishment. This is a solid example of the whites made here.              3. Kozlović - Malvazija       Way up in the north of Istria, they're making whites like this that are crisp, sweet, delicious and perfect. This is one that you can get in the US and worth every penny it may cost.              2. Zigante - Vero       An Istrian maker who have this barrique version of the standard Malvazija that is a perfectly balanced wine.              1. Bibich - Lučica       Heaven in a bottle and from an area that isn't known so much for its whites like Istria. It's a blend of several whites in the area including one called Debit. The newest vintage that's just been bottled is flat out incredible and as far as I've heard, already sold out!

There's been a lot of wine drinking in Croatia this year for me and after two months, sampling the entire coastal productions, I have a really good idea of what I like and what I don't like. The title of this post really gives away the meaning, so I just wanted to share with all the rest of you my favorite reds coming out of Croatia this year:              5. Kiriđija - Dingač       An older fellow on Pejlešac, he makes a very good and deep Plavac Mali grown in the Dingač region of that peninsula.              4. Demian - Barrique       The only Istrian member to the group because while I haven't tried every wine from Istria, this is a mighty fine vintage of Terran.              3. Bibich - Mantra       A finely crafted wine. The newest vintage blows away all previous editions.              2. Baković - Plavac Murvica       A real surprise, since I tasted the wine so long after meeting the maker. I call it the 'perfect plavac'.              1 (tied). Zlatan Plenković - Zlatan Plavac Grand Cru       I don't know what wine could knock this out the number one spot and I suspect it will be there for some time to come. It's a beautiful Plavac Mali that is barrel-aged to be one of the tastiest wines in the country. Try and find it if it doesn't sell out before you can.              1 (tied). Svirče - Ivan Dolac Eko       Brilliant, just like the Grand Cru and it makes sense, seeing as how they're maybe 15 kilometers from each other on the same island. This wine has all the sophistication of the Grand Cru, but in different ways that let it be just as tasty a Plavac Mali, while being its own wine.

I had something of a fond past with the Movia Wine Bar. It was a welcome little glass (or two) of wine on a rainy night in 2006. It was a wine maker that I thought well of and enjoyed the wines of. This has all come crashing down in sad ways upon my latest visit to the wine bar.       Maybe I had my expectations too high, but it really was the same place. The interior was exactly as I remember and there was even the same guy serving wine. It just seems that this spot must be something of a trophy piece for Aleš Kristančič and company. Something that they run at a loss just to keep the Movia name out there. Because, I can't see how having six people in there on a Friday night can keep them in business. Yes, that's all that there were, just six of us. Ah yes and one very snooty, rude, abrupt, arrogant guy running the place.       It was this guy that really started to ruin the place for me. Upon walking in, he wanted to choose our wine for us. He said, "Just tell me what you like" instead of telling us what some of the overblown names for the blends meant in terms of the wine varietals in them. He seemed like he couldn't be bothered to actually serve us. He spent any moment where he wasn't pouring in the back room of the place and when pried about details on the wines, the answers were dismissive single words. I didn't understand his problem, but it seemed we were to get the brunt of his angst.       Then there were the wines. I don't know what's happened to Movia, but the wines I had this year seriously dropped in any depth over what I had last year. They're to the point of flavorless. Those who get paid much more than I to write about wine would probably say that I'm missing the subtleties to which I say no, you're imagining those. I think what I'm drinking is the fact that Movia is more afraid of not having a vintage for a year and will harvest the grapes too early to make sure that there is a harvest as opposed to waiting until the optimum time for harvest in order to ensure that there is enough sun on the vines. Either that, or he is showing some form of insecurity in the wines because he is running out of gimmicks. No, I don't want to go from reds to whites in a flight just because it's different. I don't care if my champagne is opened under water because... I don't know why. And lastly, I don't care if the wine is aged for five years before selling because that is the minimum it can be aged before being released. If the damned thing is ready for bottling in three months, bottle it! Wine isn't about gimmicks, it's about tasting good. Leave the gimmicks for beer makers in the US.       But, above and beyond all this, there was the annoyance at the wine bar of being overcharged 25% on our bill and then getting hassled by the guy at the bar. He claimed that we were reading an old menu, a menu he had given us. This isn't our problem, it's his and making us feel like we're the offenders is outrageous. I can see why friends in Ljubljana don't go there. That was my last time as well and I recommend it to be avoided by anyone else who likes wine. There is another bar further down Stari Trg that seems to be lacking the pretension that I'll definitely need to try the next time I'm in Ljubljana. Or, if anyone else goes there, let me know how it.

A few months ago, I was pretty impressed with Biodynamic farming. It seems that a lot of people are taking to it, especially wineries that want to create that closed system that gets them all this press because they're the first to do it and it's a big deal and it's good for the environment and it's good for the food you eat and the wine you drink.       I argue with absolutely none of these points and I believe that Biodynamic is a very good thing. I just have an issue with it being bandied about like it's some kind of revelation and the people who are doing it are these gods. Yes, it does take some effort to set up, but in places like Europe, it doesn't take nearly the man hours to get something like this running as it does in the US. For, it is the case that this is really the traditional method of farming that people have been practicing for centuries and haven't left behind like we did in the US, because Big Pharma says that they have a "better ways" to farm. (As a sidenote, I didn't link to the Wikipedia article on what Big Pharma is because it just redirects to a list of the top pharmaceutical producers and not that this term of negative connotations used to describe the ever-widening umbrella of companies that saturate our lives in bad ways. It makes me wonder if it's another case of Wikipedia vandalism, but I digress...)       I return back to the example of my cousins in Slovenska Bistrica. They recycle pretty much everything they use. While this isn't the closed system you need to have for biodynamic certification, it's a massive start above and beyond that in the US. All of their organic waste from cooking either feeds pigs or gets put back in the land via composting. They save the seeds from one harvest to put back in to the next. They don't use chemicals to grow the foods on their plot of land. They have their own bees for pollination as well as delicious, delicious honey. Yes, it's not Biodynamic, but what they're doing on a home level is even above and beyond what we call Organic in the US.       It's because of this and tasting the productions made by Biodynamic producers that I'm a bit skeptical as to how the word gets used. For instance, the Slovenian wine maker, Movia seems to keep having more and more gimmicks, yet the quality of their wine seems to be dropping year after year. It's still good wine, but it seems that they're more interested in having new and exciting things happening at their winery as opposed to just producing good wine, which always and forever will speak for itself.       So just watch out for how Biodynamic is being used. I think that in the US, for most of us, Organic is all that we really need to worry about. Biodynamic producers might be making products that are "cleaner" if that's what you're most interested it, but as far as better, I think it's just a marketing blitz.

Never under any circumstances should Međimurje in the far north of Croatia be confused with Međugorje in the far south of Bosnia Herzegovina. One is religious tourist hell, the other is a refuge from all the business of modern life going the wrong direction. Naturally, it's Međimurje that I find to be bliss.       It's an area of Croatia that is the same landscape as that of Slovenia to the west. It sits in a nice little wedge right at the borders of Hungary and Slovenia and for some reason, there is always something cool about border area people. The borders they currently enjoy were never really all that static until the 20th century, so they are people that are from previous generations of those who really learned how to go with the flow and be okay with whomever's flag was flying on whatever day.       Then there is the land. There are these lumping, rolling hills that are impeccable and perfect with their long farms running along them in varying rows. There is no trash on the road, dead cars on the lawn, or unkempt areas. The people take care of this land and because there have been very few immigrations to the area, these are the same people that have been doing it for centuries. Each till in the earth has probably been done a thousand times before.       Lastly, there is naturally, the wine. While they next to no reds in the area, they do make quite good whites. There is in fact the Horvat-Hudin winery up there. The grandfather of the family had no sons, thus the gradual name change. My relation to this people goes back at least seven or eight generations and is difficult to find because of that, but we visited them when we were there and they are lovely people.       Admittedly, there is little to do in the Međimurje, which is why I like it so much. It's a great place to unplug, unwind, and just relax. This and some local hot springs are the reason that a good number of spas have started opening up there as well. So, it will be interesting to so how the area progresses over the next few years. Given that Croatia seems hellbent on only putting tourism money in to the coast; I think it will stay quite relaxed for some time to come.

In case those who read here often (and yes, I know that there might be two of you who do), you may realize that I haven't been posting all that much. Part of it is because I'm in Europe at the moment and I'm skipping from one open wifi network to the next, thieving bandwidth wherever possible. The other reason is that I'm writing for a tea maker who will be publishing the writings at some point in the future. And the other reason is that I'm writing for a wine importer who I do a bit of internet work for. Specifically, I'm writing about wines around the Mediterranean. It's a pretty choice gig, I've got to admit. I roll in to some beautiful coast somewhere, find the vineyards, taste and then write about. Sometime after tasting, I usually hit up a beach and try to get rid of my farmers' tan.       So, if you're interested, take a peek at Blue Danube Wine's Blog and you can see some work that Elia and I have been doing.

Biodynamic agriculture is nothing new (in fact, it's based on really old principles) but I've only really heard about it since the start of this year. A very excited and blustery Slovenian by the name of Aleš Kristančič, who owns the Movia Winery started talking about it at a wine dinner I was at. His winery practices it and he made a great deal about how others are coming to him to learn how to do it.       It got me wondering as to what it was. At first I guessed it was just a different name for 'organic' food growing. But, this was only part of it as it takes organic and goes beyond it to create a completely enclosed system for producing whatever it is that you want to produce.       For instance, a local wine producer in Sonoma, Benziger, grows all of their wines biodynamically. They're to the point where they even have Demeter certification, which as I understand it is that biodynamic equivalent of being certified organic, albeit a much trickier thing to accomplish. I'm not sure if it plays in to it, but they certainly make very fine wines up there.       Beyond these wine examples, I received an email today from Numi Tea stating that some part of their teas were now offered as biodynamic certified. I definitely smell something of a buzzword with this because as Evil Blue (Walmart) starts selling organic items, it will cheapen the whole term and maybe at some point negate it. Because biodynamic requires so much more work, thus decreasing the bottom line, I could never see a major retailer like them touching it. And this, is quite fine by me.

With little planning other than reserving a car two days before, we decided to make a run up to Sonoma Valley yesterday. Neither of us had been and it was a good chance to go, since we'll be taking off to Europe for quite some time. Getting a Californian counterpoint before tasting wines all over the Mediterranean is always a good idea.       So, still sleepy and not really feeling like tearing up the wine scene in Sonoma, yet committed nonetheless, we climbed in to the car and headed north. Our first stop was actually in Santa Rosa to pick up sandwiches at Traverso's for later. Tasty sandwiches from friendly people. There were a lot of other tasty items there, but wineries were calling and we just didn't have time to wade through it all. Today we were wine snobs, not foodies!       First stop was Ledson. It's a fancy place and the staff were decent enough, but I found all the wines far too dry and expensive for my tastes. There were people buying up cases of them, so to each their own I suppose. Onward down the road, we went to St. Francis. It was a much homier setting that I felt more relaxed in, but still, the wines were just too dry and on top of that were lacking in any real body until you got to their most expensive vintages. Next up was Chateau St. Jean which was bizarrely pronounced 'gene', not the French, 'jean'. I don't get that, but they had good wines and it was the first spot where I felt compelled to actually buy something to take home. Of all things to get, we got two bottles of their Merlot. I usually pull the Sideways bit of "No, if anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any fucking Merlot!" but this was a good make and will be nice to have around when I want to pull out something other than a Zinfandel, Pinot Noir, or Cab Sauv.       It was at this point, that we decided to break for lunch and have our sandwiches as well. The grounds at St. Jean are really nice and while I'm sure that they'd rather you eat the swag they're selling inside, we had a nice sit out in the trellised patio. The sun also decided to break through a gloomy set of clouds that had dogged us all morning. But, there was little time to wait and we took off to Kenwood next. Most people would wonder why, since they're not known as one of the greatest wineries, but I was curious. Admittedly, their more expensive Reserve series were considerably better than the low end cheapies that are usually found in basic grocery stores. I think I might have even liked one or two of them better than Ledson. The only downside to the experience was the terribly annoying guy pouring the wine. He hung around long after we had finished the flight, like he thought we were going to steal the glasses or something. We left rather quickly after that, briefly touched Kunde, only to find it overrun with two tour buses. In the quick exodus to find emptier pastures to drink in, we went to Benziger.       By and away, these were the finest wines we had all day. I hate to use the comparison, since I know that the Sonoma-ites will cringe, but these wines were the only ones that came on a par with those over the hill in Napa Valley. They had depth of flavor, striking, wonderful aromas, and smooth finishes. Our favorite was the Oonapais, which is an odd name, but a lovely wine. Also great was their Port. Maybe it was the Organic or Biodynamic farming, but these were flawless. Naturally, we bought the two that I mentioned for later drinking.       From there it was home and some realizations about Sonoma. While it's impossible to base conclusions on such a small selection of wineries, we found that these wines overall, were not quite up to the level that we like in Napa. It also seems that Sonoma Valley is much smaller than Napa Valley in growing area. Maybe it's just because so much of it is not next to the road, or maybe it is indeed smaller, but you seem to pass through all the best areas very quickly. Then there was the funny thing with the glasses. While Napa will try and shove them down your throat as such a benefit to the tasting, no winery we stopped at offered them for purchase. I don't get that. Maybe it's one of those small things to set them apart or whatever and it did, since I noticed.       To sum it up, is it worth another trip? Definitely. There are many more wineries to discover and a couple (such as Benziger) to return to.