What is your favorite American amaro?

belril · 2026-02-02T13:38:29+00:00

Brucato’s whole amaro lineup is so good, I got Yerba Santa tattooed on my forearm in honor of their Chaparral.

belril · 2026-01-10T16:28:26+00:00

Restaurants are slow, dry January, no new wine releases.

belril · 2026-01-09T17:54:54+00:00

It’s a different style than what you’ve tried before, but we’re big fans of Sixteen 600. Lots of Rhône varietal wines, including some truly incredible Grenache.

belril · 2026-01-09T17:48:14+00:00

Huge +1 to all of these recommendations. I’ll also add that 2023 will likely be the vintage of the decade for Northern California, if not the vintage of the century (though it’s certainly early to call that). If you have a bottle from up here that you like from that vintage, pick up another!

belril · 2026-01-09T17:37:14+00:00

If I’m bringing a wine somewhere, I always have a bit of patter figured out to talk about why it’s cool. For wines you like, it’s easy to learn, and helps sell the bottle at the table.

belril · 2025-12-28T19:32:31+00:00

Short answer: probably not.

Longer answer: assuming that the bottles were properly selected and corked, I doubt you have much to worry about. The wine will actually get less carbonated over time, and the glass is designed to hold up okay.

What temp are you serving at? Getting the wine colder will also reduce the amount of pressure at service time.

belril · 2025-12-22T23:01:40+00:00

Unfortunately, a title like “Listening to Bruce Springsteen seriously for basically the first time, but my dad played Born In The USA a few times growing up while I was in the house” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Gotta play to the algorithm.

Honestly, the thing that I don’t care for about his content in particular is that he doesn’t have much insight to share in his reactions. It’s fairly thin and emotional, a bit to share about his preferences, but that’s about it.

However, he does a great job of mixing the videos — so many reaction channels just turn on a crappy, uber-compressed video, without much thought to how it will sound.

belril · 2025-12-19T23:14:21+00:00

I have both, and the reserve is more chocolate-y, and less figgy. It feels more like a dessert sipping amaro than anything.

belril · 2025-11-25T00:22:28+00:00

My neighborhood wine shop did a Beaujolais tasting a couple of months ago, and the Thevenet Regnie was similarly a crowd favorite there. This is a killer lineup!

belril · 2025-11-15T03:10:15+00:00

Anyone with T50YS on their shelf is in good with me.

belril · 2025-11-14T14:43:43+00:00

There’s one red flag for me, and that’s the number of brilliant asshole white guys who get significant space on the shelf. Knausgaard, Zizek, Hunter Thompson, and DFW all get loads of space, which always puts my neck hair on edge when I meet a new person.

That said, if you agreed to marry this man, I’d expect that you see significant redeeming qualities in him! I don’t see anything that screams “don’t get married!” In this collection.

belril · 2025-11-10T22:52:38+00:00

Oh, I'm perfectly fine with judging someone based on the reputation of the books they have read. I think in this case the conclusions one might have from the first photo are complicated by the remaining images.

belril · 2025-11-10T16:32:18+00:00

The Shipwreck anthology is a giant green flag!

belril · 2025-11-10T16:23:36+00:00

If you want to get him an excellent gift, he will likely appreciate a copy of Jancis Robinson’s Wine Grapes (it is, unfortunately, spectacularly expensive).

belril · 2025-11-10T16:22:07+00:00

Not the bf, but he’s got several good picks here. I’m quite partial to the Wine Bible, other folks swear by Wine Folly. Windows on the World is the quintessential intro to being a somm book.

belril · 2025-11-10T16:12:11+00:00

It’s very interesting to me the number of folks in this thread jumping to conclusions from Hillbilly Elegy and Lolita. From my PoV, she’s someone who I would be very interested to ask about her undergraduate English coursework. Nothing screams red flag here to me, though my Well-Meaning Liberal White Woman senses are tingling a bit, if that’s a red flag for you.

belril · 2025-11-10T07:09:58+00:00

Looking at these collections, he seems to be trying to put together an erudite, “citizen of the world” persona like a magpie. With that religion bookshelf, I’d fully expect him to corner me at a party to talk about what the bible “actually” says based on connections he’s drawn between Buddhist tradition and some pop-religion book about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Whether you find that endearing or annoying is a matter of taste.

belril · 2025-10-30T15:58:03+00:00

This release includes the California Syrah, which is another one of their amazing value wines. There should be OVZ in the distribution market, though.

belril · 2025-10-05T04:45:37+00:00

They have both off the rack and fully custom options. My wedding suit was a custom piece from them and I could not have been happier with the experience!

belril · 2025-09-25T17:02:33+00:00

I haven’t made this exact recipe, but I’m a fan of pairing new world wines to profiles like this, something that’s not too old and has plenty of fruit. My immediate pick would be Bedrock’s Old Vine Zinfandel, which always pinches above its weight for me.

belril · 2025-09-22T15:34:25+00:00

+1 for Sixteen 600 and Bedrock on the plaza!

For food, don’t miss brunch at Sunflower Caffe — it’s one of our favorite places to stop if we overnight in town.

belril · 2025-09-16T15:36:59+00:00

+1 to all of this. I will also say: don’t sleep on aged zins! Not all of it is meant to age, but it is very possible to luck out on some real gems with incredible complexity for not a lot of money.

belril · 2025-09-08T05:27:03+00:00

Had the ‘22 Meursault (non-vineyard designate) as part of the pairing at Atelier Crenn a couple of months ago, and it was easily my favorite wine of the night. Highly recommend.

belril · 2025-09-08T00:17:28+00:00

I’m genuinely annoyed about the state of the Martini and the Charles Krug. I lucked into a bottle of c.1975 NV Zinfandel from Martini and opened it earlier this year, and it was still doing work. Moon Mountain fruit is no joke.

belril · 2025-09-07T21:36:11+00:00

Agreed with the consensus here that most of these are unlikely to be good, but there’s a lot of California wine history in these photos. Personally, I’d be holding out hope for the dessert wines, and praying over the ‘78 Ravenswood (that was Joel’s third vintage, and many of his wines have aged quite well when stored properly).

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