Friday Sips

A return engagement just in time for the holidays!!
Meet Cookbook author Diane Morgan and sample wines to pair with recipes from her latest title, "Roots: The Definitive Compendium"

Cooking, Eating and Drinking lovers, this is a must-attend!! Diane will be signing her cookboks that will be on offer, too.

Visit Diane's Website: www.dianemorgancooks.com

If you love Italian red wines, there has never been a better time to get some of this one to be your versatile dinner red that you can serve for an upscale Italian dinner or with a steaming bowl of spaghetti & meatballs. Well, what is it? Read on...

A blend of Montepulciano, Barbera, Cabernet Franc & Merlot from vines planted in 1978 in the Marche region of Italy, Bisci is most notably a great Verdicchio producer and this red shows that they are just a great wine producer, period. Loaded with scents and flavors of black cherry, blackberry, herbs, and black pepper, it is soft and silky in the mouth. This is a yummy-delicious red that pairs well with everything from pasta to roasted chicken.

The burning question of the day is what do all hair-farmers, butt-rockers, and mullet-heads drink before the big rock show featuring the legendary heavy metal band, Metallica???? Why it's Verdicchio from the zone which almost sounds like the name of the band....

In all actuality, this white wine is from the slopes of the Marches region of Italy. What separates the Matelica region from Castelli di Jesi is location and especially soils. Matelica is high elevation and unique to the area with sheer hard limestone soils. The 2011 is a crisp, zesty and vivid flavored wine that can best be described as Italian dynamite. Teeming aromas of flint, earth, hints of lemon-peel and smoke lead into a tense, bone-dry texture that is well-delineated and firm. If you like things like unoaked, zesty, flavorful white wines you will love it! This wine is a perfect foil for oysters and especially crab, and can be enjoyed by anyone who listens to punk, R & B, classical, or jazz...and of course, butt-rock (a.k.a. bad 80s hair metal).

Get yourself a heroic dose one of the most astounding single vineyard Barbera wines in all of Piedmont. Not only is Luca Currado a master with Barbera, this wine is also from 2010 which is destined to be the next epic vintage for not only Barbera but Barolo, Barbaresco and the entire realm of Piemonte.

Scarrone is a single vineyard within the Barolo village of Castiglione Falletto and is one of Piedmont's real prizes. From prime Barolo land, this particular Barbera is always rich, always seductive and always discreet. 2010 will probably shape up to have much in common with the likes of 1999 or 2004 and following all of the patterns of an outstanding vintage, outstanding farming and where it hails from, this wine offers both hedonistic pleasure all the while maintaining smoothness and finesse.

Chock full of strawberry, cranberry and violet scents that are wrapped around subtle oak tones that never overpower. Layered and luscious in the mouth with hearty tones that make it a sumptuous winter wine with risotto or bold pasta dishes. There is a lot of beauty to this wine now and we whole-heartedly recommend opening it, but do put some away because it’ll easily age another decade.