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Kopaonik is the largest Serbian ski resort. It is a popular place for domestic skiers and is becoming increasingly popular with foreign visitors. Although “Kopaonik” is actually a large mountain, the term usually refers to the area around the “Grand” hotel and the apartment complex “Sun?ani Vrhovi”. The area is small but contains quite a few hotels and private houses. It’s self contained, with shops, banks, a post office, etc. Apart from the restaurants in hotels, there are a few good restaurants around. In this article I’ll write about the restaurants I’ve visited this year, it might help you make the right choice (I didn’t have any tips at all…).
Etno club “Sunce”
This restaurant is located at the end of a quiet cool-de-sac, in the woods, a 5 minute walk from the Grand hotel. It looks very small from the outside, but it’s quite a spacious place. The atmosphere is great, fairly traditional, with two open fire places, a mixture of smaller and larger tables, a nice blend of loudness and privacy. The music wasn’t great, but that’s the easiest thing to change . The food was excellent and so was the service. They offer mainly Serbian dishes, if you’re not sure what to choose from the menu, the waiters will help you with their recommendations, you can trust them. The wine list includes wines from some of the better Serbian cellars, such as Radovanovi? and Aleksandrovi? (Topola). Go for Aleksandrovi?’s red or white Triumph, they are some of the best wines Serbia has to offer. Overall, it’s a great place, I’ll be back.
Food quality 5/5 Atmosphere 5/5 Service: 5/5 Price 3/5 (moderate, but excellent value) Wine list 3/5 (Radovanovi?, Aleksandrovi?)
Na?a ku?a
This place reminds me of modern pubs-restaurants in Ireland. It has a large bar area in the center, with large tables around, a couple of two seater tables in the corner for some extra privacy and a cosy open fire in the front. Both the interior of the restaurant and the furniture are made of light coloured wood, and there are stripes of small red lights throughout. There’s also a big video beam that mainly shows snow scenes during the day. It is a place frequented by the younger crowd and is open quite late into the nigth (until 3am). They have a small but well-chosen menu (which is also extremely well designed) and it’s obvious they put a lot of effort to make it a bit different from other restaurants in the vicinty. The chef is excellent, and the food is great, so give “Na?a Ku?a” a try if you get tired from the Serbian cousine and are looking for some European tastes. It is one of the more expensive restaurants, with a full dinner for two with a bottle of wine and a dessert producing a bill of around 50 euros. The wine choice is not great, but they do have a few wines apart from the regular choice, we recommend the wines from the Terra Lazarica range.
Food quality 5/5 Atmosphere 4/5 (nice mix of modern and traditional, younger crowd) Service: 4/5 Price 2/5 (expensive) Wine list 2/5
Etno ku?a Studenica
If you’re on a lower budget looking for good quality Serbian food you should visit the etno restaurant Studenica. Pick one of the two tables on the far left to avoid looking at the interior of the kitchen and to avoid the local crowd on the right side. The place is clean, the food was great and the waiter was top-notch, but the problem with this place is that it has too much light, it is visited by the local crowd and generally the level of privacy is quite low.
Food quality 4/5 Atmosphere 2/5 Service: 4/5 Price 4/5 (relatively cheap, good value) Wine list 1/5
Zvrk
This is a very popular restaurant located at the center of ski activities (the “baby slope”, ski lifts Karaman Greben and Pan?i?ev Vrh), just besides the Grand hotel. The restaurant has two levels, the upper one being more packed and colorful, the lower one containing a large center-located open fire place. This fire creates a very tempting smell outside the restaurant, which is the main reason you probably won’t resist getting into it. In general, it’s not a bad place, but there are much better choices around…
Food quality: 2/5 Atmosphere: 4/5 Service: 3/5 Price: 3/5 Wine list: 1/5 (just the very basic Serbian wines)
Ever get one of those annoying scam emails asking you to accept stolen credit card numbers and send your product overseas? Who are these scam artists? Who are their victims? Can they be stopped? Dover Canyon Winery has just published a five-part series of articles called Inside a Wine Scam. The series has resulted in FBI subpoenas for the operators accepting money transfers at a remote location in Oklahoma. In a surprising twist, the 'front man' for the scam may herself be a victim of 'work from home' fraud.
If you are often frustrated reading wine magazines, wine books, and wine reviews that focus on wines you can't find in your local store, you may wonder why I am addicted to Michael Broadbent's Vintage Wine: Fifty Years of Tasting Three Centuries of Wines. This book collects his tasting notes for the oldest, rarest, and most coveted wines in the world.
If you don't know Michael Broadbent's book, it's an awe-inspiring trip through some of the oldest and most expensive cellars on the planet. And because there's no conceivable way most of us will ever be able to buy any of the wines he tastes here, there's none of that frustration--just pure enjoyment. If this sounds like something you might find fun, or you are looking for a gift for a wine lover, check out today's post.
This is a premium Montenegrin red wine made from the indigenous Vranac grape. The Reserve is produced from particulary good years, in small quantities, aged in barrels for several years. It is also aged in bottles for one year before being released to the market.
This is a dry wine, with a pleasant fruity nose. However, the impressions are far lower than it’s price. If you want to experience the Vranac variety the Montenegrin way, go for a regular Planta?e Vranac or their Vranac Pro Corde. They are much cheaper and the experience is almost the same.
Wines of the Vranac variety are produced throughout the region, apart from Montenegro, you can find them in Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Herzegovina.
Shortly after 1 died Sept. 19 at 78, I got a message from Gavin Speight, his U.S. importer. He said that he would like to celebrate Carrodus' life by dipping into his own personal cellar to open a few of the iconoclastic winemaker's older 1 bottles. Earlier this week I met Speight, who imports some of Australia's finest and most venerable artisanal wines, at Cavallo Point, the new resort near Sausalito.
Smells like food, in particular something sweet and Middle Eastern. To begin it is all citrus (especially orange peel) but in time it is mainly musk, vanilla and cinnamon. Quite fresh and persistent, I wonder if this can replace the aeroguard?
More interesting than the scent is the list of ingredients. BHT (Butylated hydroytoluene, which has been banned as a food additive since 1958 in Japan, but can be used in cosmetics where it is an anti oxidant and fat preserver), linalool (naturally occurring terpene found in many plants, such as coriander seed, cinnamon and lavender to name a few), geraniol (rose scented this potentially deters mosquitoes but may attracts bees), coumarin (a precursor of warfarin and toxic to rats, this is found in many plants including the tonka bean, vanilla grass and cassia bark, banned as a food additive in the USA since 1978), limonene (found in the rind of lemon and other citrus, this smells of oranges and is good for removing grease), hydroxycitronellal, citronellol (often used in insect repelling candles), citral and butylphenyl methylpropional (floral in scent but with a variety of reports of toxicity)
Dark and winey, but polished. There's a good beam of blackberry and black currant fruit that's reticent for now, with loam, tar and coffee-laced tannins at the fore. Should open up nicely with modest cellaring. Best from 2009 through 2014. 1,550 cases imported.
Dulka is one of the most famous wine producing families in the town of Sremski Karlovci, near Novi Sad in Vojvodina. They produce wine since 1920 and have won a handful of awards at the Novi Sad agricultural fair throughout the years. Apart from producing wine, this familiy also produces bermet and brandies of highest qualities.
They have just recently started growing Cabernet Sauvignon, and 2005 is their second vintage. However, this wine is quite rich in both aroma and taste, much richer and deeper than other pure Cabernets around. The color is dark ruby red, the nose rich, so reminiscent of forests and the flavours are those of forest fruit and chocolate. It’s a good wine, can be enjoyed on it’s own.
Weingut Bernard OTT. Wagram, Austria. 12.5%. Screwcap. Approx $A40.
One of the most notable things about this wine (besides the harmless tartrate crystals), is the lovely texture. Though a dry wine of 12.5%, this feels more voluptuous. It's silky and essence like and there is an impression of weight and flesh, without heaviness. It is zippy and spice laden with plenty of grip and length.
I wanted to let you all know that my Pinot Gris website (PinotGris.Biz) is up for sale. It is full of great, original wine content written by me. It also currently ranks highly with the major search engines:
#3 overall on Yahoo for Pinot Gris (search) #4 overall on MSN for Pinot Gris (search) Page Rank = 1 (Google)
I am asking $250 for the site, perhaps less to someone who just wanted the domain name. If I don't sell right away, I will continue to promote it.
Not to sound like a lush or anything?, but I love the booze. All aspects of it. Grape, honey, barley, corn, whatever. I like sitting down to a well-set table and a nice dinner with a fantastically-matched glass of wine to sip and savor, but I also enjoy gulping down a can of cheap beer after mowing the lawn. I?ve been doing single malt scotch tastings and keeping a whisky journal since 2002, but I also like sitting around a campfire and drinking rot-gut until I?m staggering and bleary-eyed.
There are times I drink simply because it tastes good, and times I drink because I want to get stupid. Sometimes both. Well, a little while ago, I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation re-runs. There?s a great episode where Picard goes home to France for the first time in years. His brother, Robear, is still running the family vineyard. They sit down to the evening meal, and Robear uncorks a bottle of the family wine.
Jean-Luc: Is this the forty-six? Robear: *tsk* The forty-seven. You?ve been drinking too much of that? what?s it called? Synthahol? Spoiled your palette. Jean-Luc: On the contrary, I think it heightens one?s appreciation for the genuine article.
(For the non-Trekkies in the room, synthahol is a substitute for alcohol that does not impair judgment like alcohol does.)
Heightens one?s appreciation for the genuine article. I love that line, and it got me thinking? Would I drink wine, beer and whisky if it was non-alcoholic? All things considered, is it the taste, the buzz, or both?? What about you? If beer, wine and spirits contained no alcohol, would you still have that glass of fantastic wine with dinner, that ice-cold beer after moving the lawn, or that treasured dram of 15-year-old whisky?
Me? I?d probably stop drinking whisky, because even though I dearly love exploring the subtle nuances of different single malts, spending that kind of money on a non-alcoholic drink would be silly. I?d still drink wine and meads, since finding a good match can really enhance a meal, irregardless of alcohol content. Complimenting a strip steak or a plate of fine cheeses with a can of Diet Coke or a glass of cranberry juice just wouldn?t cut it. I?m not sure about beer. I?m not much of a beer drinker anyway, so I?d probably stop altogether if it was all non-alcoholic. I went through a phase when I was drinking non-alcoholic beer because it was thirst-quenching, but it got a bit expensive. An ice cold Fresca would do the trick after mowing the lawn, I guess.
It's time to talk turkey again--and what wine goes with it. (image from Carolina Morning)
Every year, new visitors come to this site in search of a delicious, affordable, and available bottle of wine to pair with their holiday meal. Old friends visit, too, sometimes to suggest their own picks for the year and sometimes to take issue with something I've picked. It doesn't matter why you're here--I'm glad to see you, and hope that what follows will be helpful to you as you plan for the big dinner.
If you are looking for general advice on Thanksgiving wine and hospitality, I'd encourage you to check out this article I wrote a few years ago on issues facing the host/hostess and the guests. If you are wondering what to drink with your meal, and with leftovers, you're in the right place. Here are my picks for 2008--all of which offer great taste and great value in an easy-to-find package. Clicking on the wine's name will take you to the winery's site where you can find more information about the wine and its makers. Many of the wines I picked this year are made with organic grapes, are farmed with sustainability in mind, and/or are made by families with great stories of how they got in the business of grape-growing and wine-making. Clicking on the range of prices will take you to a list of retailers who stock the wine. Maybe one will be near you.
Sparkling Wines What's a holiday dinner without some bubbles? These two picks are great for toasts, appetizers, brunch the morning after, or drinking with the main meal. Sparkling wine has great acidity, which means it pairs with most foods and there's no doubt that sparklers are festive. NV Roederer Estate Brut ($15-$20). For my money, this is the best value around in domestic sparkling wine. Expect tiny bubbles, aromas of brioche and Meyer lemon, and flavors of apples, toast, and nuts. Just as good with food as without.
NV Domaine Allimant-Laugner Cremant d'Alsace Rose ($16-$19). If you're looking for a pink sparkler, try this one. It' made with 100% Pinot Noir and has knockout fresh strawberry aromas with light berry, mineral, and citrus flavors. Like the Roederer Brut, this wine is as good with food as it is without.
Rosé Wines Rosé wines are perfect for turkey and all the side-dishes that make us groan afterwards. If you feel that rosé wines are too "casual" for a fancy dinner, don't forget the leftovers. Wouldn't a cool rosé be perfect on Saturday with your turkey sandwich? These rosé winesare dry, not sweet, and very refreshing. 2007 Fort Ross Pinot Noir Rosé($12-$16). Fort Ross makes some of the best Pinot Noir out there, and this is the rosé version of their wine. It's a beautiful color, with raspberry and strawberry aromas and flavors and a delicious stony note that keeps it complex and interesting. 2006 Jeriko Estate Rosé ($9-$13). This is a round and full rosé, with aromas and flavors of strawberries and minerals. If you don't like watermelon notes in your wine, you'll like this. Made with organic grapes.
White Wines I'm a fan of white wines for Thanksgiving. I like their freshness, and the way that they pair so beautifully with stuffing, gravy, turkey, cranberries, Waldorf salad--you name it, these whites will go with it. They're versatile and flavorful, but won't overwhelm the food. 2006 Brooks Riesling ($14-$19). This is not a sweet wine. It's dry in style, with aromas of lime, apple, Meyer lemon, petrol, and stone. You will taste lime, slate, currants, and a touch of honey which makes it ideal if you are serving smoked turkey or a turkey made with lots of spices. Exceptionally complex for the price. 2006 Adelsheim Pinot Gris ($14-$20). Delicious aromas of peach, honey, and a kiss of caramelized sugar, but there's lots of bright acidity to keep the peach and apple flavors in balance. This aromatic wine would be perfect if you are serving sausage stuffing, and while it may give a sweet impression it finishes dry. 2006 Mauritson Sauvignon Blanc ($13-$17). One of the best domestic Sauvignon Blancs I've had in a long time, made with no oak and no assertive aromas or flavors. Warm melon, Meyer lemon, and clementine aromas and flavors accompany fresh, grassy notes. 2007 Clif Bar Family Winery The Climber White ($13-$15). This white blend has a core of Sauvignon Blanc with the addition of Pinot Blanc (12%), Chenin Blanc (4%) and Muscat (3%). The result is a wine with good acidity but an impression of softness. Aromas of pink grapefruit and nectarine, and flavors of Meyer lemon, nectarine, and peach. 2007 Cupcake Vineyards Chardonnay ($11-$13; also available in CostPlus World Markets). A new label to me, this wine had clean and fresh apple and citrus aromas and flavors. There is a lovely creaminess to this wine, and a touch of mild oakiness. Very much like a white wine from Burgundy at a fraction of the price.
Red Wines There are a lot of people out there recommending Zinfandel for Thanksgiving. Unless you are very, very careful you may overwhelm your food with a jammy, high-alcohol wine. That's true for many other red wines, too. If you are serving turkey and lots of different sweet and savory dishes, red wines may not be your best bet. However, the ones below will not overwhelm your food--and the flavors may be just right for you if you like dark meat, or are serving something smoked or (gasp!) not serving turkey at all.
2006 Domaine du Vissoux/Pierre-Marie Chermette Vieilles Vignes Cuvee Traditionelle ($12-$16). Gamay is a low-alcohol, high-acid grape that produces fresh, zesty reds. You will smell cherries, berries and some chalk in this wine, and the flavors are pure, juicy Bing cherry with an earthy undertow and some mineral notes. 2006 MacMurray Ranch Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast ($12-$27) A great bargain in Pinot Noirs, this wine has high-toned cherry and raspberry fruit aromas, with a touch of allspice. There are flavors of cherry, raspberry, allspice, and fresh-baked cobbler with a terrific, silky texture.
2004 Quivira Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley ($18-$20). If you must, this is the Zinfandel to get. With aromas of black cherry, allspice, and cedar, and flavors of cherry, baker's chocolate, and pepper it has beautiful acidity and is very food friendly. This Zin feels and tastes more old fashioned and restrained--just the way I like them. The 2005 is also in the market, and while I haven't tasted it, ordinary drinkers on CellarTracker! seem to give it thumbs up, too. 2004 Bodegas Montecillo Rioja Crianza ($7-$12). If you think I'm nuts to suggest Tempranillo with turkey--trust me. I'm not. This is one of the great bargain reds, from Osborne's Bodegas Montecillo. There are aromas of roasted herbs and spicy berries, and nice, high-toned red fruit. Beautiful acidity and some dusty tannins make for a long, juicy aftertaste.
Whatever you serve on Thanksgiving, remember to relax and enjoy your friends and family. That's what the holiday is really all about!
Disclosure: The Adelsheim, MacMurray Ranch, and Clif Bar Family Winery bottlings were samples; I tasted both the Cupcake and Osborne wines at tastings. All other bottles were purchased by me over the last eleven months in a variety of brick-and-mortar and online stores.
A founding partner of US investment banking firm Global Wine Partners believes South Africa, with its excellent wine-growing conditions, the beauty of its winelands and competitive cost structures,is well placed to advance from its relative obscurity in the US to the point where it becomes better recognised for its quality offerings.
Laura Catena is hardly your average emergency room doc. The Argentine native - who came to the US with her professor dad to attend high school and wound up staying to attend Harvard for undergrad and then Stanford for medical school - "moonlights" from her job as an ER physician at UCSF by making wine, and on another continent at that. That's right, the married mother of three (yes, she has a nanny) successfully holds down TWO glamorous jobs and apparently has energy to burn, as I witnessed when I interviewed her in San Fran's homey Cole Valley several weeks ago. But besides her fascinating resume and seemingly boundless energy, I was most intrigued by Catena's commitment to making small batches of totally world-class wine from Mendoza's top low-yield, high-elevation vineyards. And though you may have heard more about her family's OTHER winery, Bodega Catena Zapata (considered by many the preeminent winery in all of Argentina), I predict her own label, Luca, has a bright future all its own.
Read on for an exclusive interview with Laura, including her ruminations on pursuing multiple careers, living on two continents, and generally being fabulous (okay, that last part is totally my conjecture, but I have to say she's impressive). Enjoy!
A few weeks ago someone came in and said, ?I have this new wine from Armenia you have to try?. So, with much hesitation I went over and tasted this Armenian wine. I was even less excited when I saw the label and realized that it was a pomegranate wine. It was pretty nasty I must say. But, the folks in Isreal didn?t think so and they made their own version.
Several years before the trend got started, a family in Israel's Upper Galilee region began working to create a tastier and healthier version of the ancient fruit, only to cross their way into yet another huge food market. Their product: the world's first pomegranate wine fit to be sold to international wine connoisseurs.
The craziest part though, in my opinion, is that Pomegranate doesn?t have enough natural sugars to ferment to alcohol. The majority of the time it has to be tampered with to even get it to the alcohol content that it needs to be a wine.
In general, pomegranates don't have enough natural sugar to ferment into alcohol on its own," Leo Open, Rimon's director of international marketing, told ISRAEL21c. "In the past, some people have added alcohol to pomegranate juice to create a form of liquor, but no one has successfully made wine. Our pomegranates are the only ones in the world that have enough sugar to do so naturally."
Hmmmmm.
"Like with all wines, the fermentation process is totally natural," Open says. That being said, pomegranate wines clearly belong to a different class than the typical reds and whites, and Rimon recognizes that the market has to treat it as such, Open says. "We consider it a fruit wine, definitely not a liqueur, and it has to be appreciated in this way."
If you have to tell me that your wine is a fruit wine and not a liquor, that?s probably not a good sign. Here?s my advice, make wine from grapes. That?s it?.it?s simple. Wine= grapes!!
So, in Illinois a police chief has a big beef with big beers. Apparently 22 ounce beers are ending up as trash all over the city and the chief is fed up. He even goes so far as to say?
Police Chief Rich Miller wants to outlaw the sale of beer in 24- or 32-ounce cans, saying those sizes are preferred by trouble-making drunks.Miller says stores sell them in paper bags that conceal them perfectly and end up as litter, and that Granite City would be better off if stores just didn't sell such beers.
So, lemme get this straight, only drunks drink 22 ounce beers?? http://cbs11tv.com/watercooler/watercooler_story_254120050.html
Science Rocks!
Check it out. I found this clip on You Tube for a new robot created by Asahi that pours your beer for you. Sure I have no idea what it is saying (probably something like Americans are retarded) and it takes a little over 3 minutes to pour the damn thing but cool nonetheless. If you?re wasted, or if you?re name is Kipp and are obsessed with beer gadgets I am guessing that it is a necessity!
For years I have loved you. I have sold your wine to people who don?t even know how to pronounce your name yet they always come back for more. I know the quote on your bottle ? ?Through this earth gate, this Torii Mor, we step, to make glad the soul with wine?. I have visited your winery and tasting room, I have bought your expensive single vineyard wines. I loved you Torii Mor. I loved you even after Patty Green left you to make her own winery but I should have known. I should have known that one day one of my undiscovered baby wineries in Oregon would sell its soul for cash. Premier Buying Group from Napa has been buying vineyard land in Oregon in a very deceitful manner and Torii Mor owner Jim Olsen has been the man behind the scenes. Expect a ?Mondavi? like venture that whores out cheap ass pinot noir in your near future.
I went to New York last week and had a great time. I went to the Bubble Lounge which is a restaurant that serves over 350 champagnes by the glass. I was in heaven. I drank the Veuve Cliquot MV "La Grand Siecle". Yep that's right MV - not NV. MV means that they blend vintages. This particular wine was '88, '90, and '95 vintages from Veuve single vineyards and it was well worth every penny I paid for it. Here's a picture. I'd post more pictures but the night went downhill from there and while the pics are very funny, they are also very telling!!!
Tecnorati
. The food was excellent and so was the service. They offer mainly Serbian dishes, if you’re not sure what to choose from the menu, the waiters will help you with their recommendations, you can trust them. The wine list includes wines from some of the better Serbian cellars, such as Radovanovi? and Aleksandrovi? (Topola). Go for Aleksandrovi?’s red or white Triumph, they are some of the best wines Serbia has to offer. Overall, it’s a great place, I’ll be back.
This is a premium Montenegrin red wine made from the indigenous Vranac grape. The Reserve is produced from particulary good years, in small quantities, aged in barrels for several years. It is also aged in bottles for one year before being released to the market.
Dulka is one of the most famous wine producing families in the town of Sremski Karlovci, near Novi Sad in Vojvodina. They produce wine since 1920 and have won a handful of awards at the Novi Sad agricultural fair throughout the years. Apart from producing wine, this familiy also produces 
Laura Catena is hardly your average emergency room doc. The Argentine native - who came to the US with her professor dad to attend high school and wound up staying to attend Harvard for undergrad and then Stanford for medical school - "moonlights" from her job as an ER physician at UCSF by making wine, and on another continent at that. That's right, the married mother of three (yes, she has a nanny) successfully holds down TWO glamorous jobs and apparently has energy to burn, as I witnessed when I interviewed her in San Fran's homey Cole Valley several weeks ago. But besides her fascinating resume and seemingly boundless energy, I was most intrigued by Catena's commitment to making small batches of totally world-class wine from Mendoza's top low-yield, high-elevation vineyards. And though you may have heard more about her family's OTHER winery, 
I went to New York last week and had a great time. I went to the Bubble Lounge which is a restaurant that serves over 350 champagnes by the glass. I was in heaven. I drank the Veuve Cliquot MV "La Grand Siecle". Yep that's right MV - not NV. MV means that they blend vintages. This particular wine was '88, '90, and '95 vintages from Veuve single vineyards and it was well worth every penny I paid for it. Here's a picture. I'd post more pictures but the night went downhill from there and while the pics are very funny, they are also very telling!!!