Here is a plot of the 2008 Wine Spectator ratings. Notice the curious kink at the 90-point break. << MORE >>

Bo Derek may have been a "1O" in the eponymous movie, but that number did not tell you much about her (other than the obvious, which I admit may be enough for a lot of guys, but those guys probably are beer drinkers anyway and would not much care about wine ratings). I think of wine as I think of women: neither can be adequately described by a single number; they both have too many intertwined dimensions to reduce them to a couple of digits. That is the central problem of the 100-point system; it reduces the complex to the simplistic. << MORE >>

I don't mean to keep ragging on the hospitality industry, but the data seems to indicate that restaurants and bars have in recent years significantly increased wine prices far above not only the rate of inflation but above the price of wine we can buy at retail shops.<< MORE >>

In this article we examine Yuca Restaurant's wine list. We will look at the relationship between Yuca's table prices and retail prices. << MORE >>

Please vote: What is the *maximum* restaurant price that you consider reasonable or fair for a bottle of wine that sells at retail for $30? << MORE >>

Here we begin to address the question posed in the prior blog entry: How much should restaurants mark-up wine prices?<< MORE >>

I take my hat off to anyone who owns a restaurant. Theirs is a high risk and arduous business. Yet, I don't buy the party line that to "make a living" restaurant owners need to charge offensively high wine prices. << MORE >>

My friend Sergio gets a kick out of my routinely predictable rants about merchants--usually restaurants--who insult their customers with confiscatory wine markups; he will probably laugh when he reads this one. I use the term insult deliberately, for I think it's an insult to consumers to charge prices so high that one would expect only idiots to pay them. Case in point, the gift shop at Miami's Knight Convention Center.<< MORE >>

Catherine and I noted last year while visiting the Spanish Basque Country that locals, and especially French tourists, seemed to like to drink Rosés at restaurants. Americans, however, don't drink enough Rosés. Why?<< MORE >>

Warren Buffett is one of the world’s all-time greatest investors. His biography (which I recommend reading not necessarily to learn about the man but about his investment philosophy), by Roger Lowenstein, portrays him as a brilliant guy who leads an understated lifestyle and who treasures simple pleasures, like drinking Cherry Coke instead of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC to the cognoscenti) wines--which can sell for up to several thousand dollars per bottle (yes, you read it right, thousands, as in 000s) per bottle. Buffett is a “value” investor.<< MORE >>

Bullsh*t permeates the wine industry--from the wine company that lies about the content of its bottles to the regulating authorities that sanction the lie. Let's talk about bottle label deception: is what's on the bottle what's in the bottle? Chicken and Broccoli Say you have a couple of friends coming to dinner and the wife asks you to pick up a wine to go with the standard chicken and broccoli dish which she has perfected throughout the years (with your stoic assistance as the experimental guinea pig).<< MORE >>

Welcome to the MiamiWine blog, where I hope to discuss wine from a consumer's perspective. My goal is to inform, educate and entertain you. The "Miami" in the blog's name is intended primarily as a label and not as an indication of content.<< MORE >>