Live Life...Drink Wine ~
Certified Sommelier Stanley Browne and the Staff at Robust
comment on the pleasures and plights of wine, food, travel and entertaining.
I have a passion for Italian wines and was fortunate to travel throughout Italy and experience some of the best food and wines the beautiful country has to offer. The people are rich in heritage and embrace the simple yet fundamental values focused on family, food, wine and "the good life." If you ever get a chance to visit Italy, I encourage you to jump at it. It is everything and more than you can imagine.
There seems to be a bit of confusion when it comes to Syrah and Shiraz. In my latest column, "The Wine Life", in Ladue News, I give you a little insight.
Check it out and join me in a glass. It's all a matter of taste.
A. Bommarito Wines Chaumette Winery Classique Wines Major Brands
It was an amazing event and we are proud to support, through a portion of the proceeds, College Bound a nationally acclaimed organizations that helps at risk youth in St. Louis prepare and succeed in 4-year colleges.
And an extra special thanks to Jennifer Johnson, Marketing Director at Chaumette for partnering with us on making this event such a success. We can't wait for next year!
Welcomes to the world of bubbles. In this New Year of 2012 I invite you to celebrate every day! Here is a little sip for thought in one of my recent articles in Ladue News:
Dark and delectable; velvety, rich, smooth and creamy. Its powerful, yet tender sweetness lingers long after it slowly melts away.
Chocolate. The word itself conjures dizzying thoughts of delight and decadence. It's easy to lose yourself in its luxury, and paired with some lush and robust wines, the result can be euphoric, a playground for the senses.
When my trusted friend and brilliant colleague, Jennifer Johnson, Marketing Director at Chaumette Winery, approached me with the idea of gathering the finest local chocolate producers for a chocolate and wine event, I was eager to help. Jennifer's wealth of wine knowledge, as well as, strong marketing and PR experience has made planning for this event seamless, and every bit more worthy.
Stanley and I are proud to live and own a business in St. Louis. We are equally passionate about supporting local businesses and our community. Some of the finest chocolate producers and wines are right here in our region and we believe we should foster, support and celebrate what we are all about.
We are also passionate about the people of our community, and felt it was important that we include a philanthropic component to our efforts. For us, education is the key to economic freedom, so in this inaugural year of The Art of Chocolate and Wine, we chose to honor College Bound. With a portion of the proceeds going to support, low-income College Bound students, we can celebrate all that our community has to offer.
On Sunday, January 22, we hope you will join us for The Art of Chocolate and Wine: Inspire Your Desires!Celebrate and taste the finest local, artisan, hand-crafted chocolates we have to offer and sip on wines that will ignite your senses.
After all, isn't everyone looking for a little inspiration these days?
Special thanks to our fabulous chocolatiers and wine sponsors:
“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”-Benjamin Franklin
So I have been asked to start writing this blog on beer. Even though I have a love for wine and opening a jammy blend from Rhone with friends, drinking the rosés of Provence and swimming in the Mediterranean Sea.
90% of the time when I’m ending a phone or text conversation with a friend the words, “Oh and grab a case on the way,” is the way our talk ends. The more I thought about it, you can say I’ve come to think of the relationship of wine and beer like this: Where wine is the expression of the grape, beer is an expression of the artist. Unencumbered by the traditions and rules that the wine industry has to deal with, a beer makers creation is limited only by his or hers imagination.
With beer if you taste chocolate, coffee, or even pumpkin spice, odds are you taste it because that is an ingredient itself, with the quantity of those ingredients specifically chosen to give the drinker a prefect mouthful of beer every time.
I’ve worked at Robust for almost three years and the one thing that makes me chuckle is that we have a beer list with almost thirty beers broken down in the similar to our wine, easy-to-use Robust Factors. There are some people that still don’t know we even sell beer. The beer categories are a little different than the wine: Fresh, Lively, Hearty, Robust, and Fruity. The beer list changes about twice a year, and since its spring, that means its time to switch it up. There are a couple of heavy hitters that have a good chance of making the cut due to their style and expression. From Goose Island Brewery in Chicago there is the India Pale Ale, and from Brazil the Xingu Black Beer.
The India Pale Ale when poured into a glass has a great burnt orange color and a nice head that hangs on the glass like lace with every drink (lace, actually being the technical name for it). Time to drink, it starts with just a tingle from the hops on the tongue followed by fruit and malt coating the tongue then finishing with a long hoppy finish which lasts at least 7 seconds.
Xingu black beer is a very unique beer when poured into a glass. Carbonated with nitrogen instead of CO2 the bubbles in the beer are light, the beer is smooth as it rolls over the tongue tasting chocolate, malt and just a hint of red fruit. This is a beer that is a great segway beer for a person looking to break into the world of dark beers, and a beer for dark beer lovers to drink sitting on a patio on a hot summer day.
So next time you go to Robust look your server in the eyes and ask them for a “twelve-ounce three-ounce,” and I promise you will get a laugh out of them and a great drink in your hand, ENJOY!
