Month: April 2016

Quindals 2007 – Empordá, Spain

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Powerful blackberry, bordering on blueberry, and slight woodiness notes on the nose. Violets, black pepper, and powerful charcoal and black rubber notes on the palate. Muscular, typically Catalan, tannins keep the powerful flavors all honest. Dark chocolate and roses come on in a soft shift from the rubber and charcoal. Tannins are chewy, raisiny, almost like cherry chewing gum. This is a wine that will teach you why the Catalans call red wine “black wine” – so dark that only words like black-red can describe it. I picked this beauty up at Calvert Woodley simply because it was from Empordá for about $20.

  • Rating: Impressive
  • Name: Quindals 2007
  • Winery: Mas Estela
  • Region: Empordá
  • Country: Spain
  • Varietals: 90% Garnatxa Negra, 5% Syrah, 5% Samsó
  • Price: $20-25
  • Where to Buy: Calvert Woodley Wines & Spirits

Travel Recommendations

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This is a way for the authors to share recommendations with each other and with their friends. Having lived and traveled all over Latin America, South America, and Europe, Sheridan can be trusted to lead you to the best barstool in Rio for a traditional shot of gengibre or around the labyrinth of cobblestone streets in old town San Sebastian for the best steak of your life. 

Restaurant & Bar Reviews

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Over the course of our travels we are privileged to encounter some of the best food and drink in the world….

If you don’t know Nathan or Sheridan, this blog might help you navigate wine shops and restaurants in a better way than crowd-sourced options: a quick browse through the content will give you a sense of how your own tastes compare to theirs, whether these guys really know what they’re blathering on about, and, thus, whether you can rely on their recommendations. With no journalistic aspirations in play, hopefully they’ll free the reviews from the self-absorbed bloviating found on most crowd sourced options and keep things straight, to the point, and useful.

Wine Reviews

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In brief, this blog is not exactly meant for you. This is a way for the authors to share recommendations with each other and with their friends. Since meeting at language school in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil in the summer of 2005, Nathan and Sheridan kept in touch through their respective graduate school years, sharing notes on everything from economics to wine, from relationships to navigating Washington DC’s shark-infested career waters. More recently, their shared passion for wine has led to budding wine-related projects, including planting a couple of rows of Barbera in Nathan’s backyard and making wine (to be clear, Nathan makes it, Sheridan helps drink it). After years of struggling to keep up with their own tasting notes, while fielding countless friends’ desperate text messages from wine stores and markets asking for beverage recommendations or that special recipe to impress the new love interest, Nathan and Sheridan created this blog to capture their developing tastes and recommendations for friends to enjoy . . . and the two of them to remember.

If you don’t know Nathan or Sheridan, this blog might help you navigate wine shops and restaurants in a better way than crowd-sourced options: a quick browse through the content will give you a sense of how your own tastes compare to theirs, whether these guys really know what they’re blathering on about, and, thus, whether you can rely on their recommendations. With no journalistic aspirations in play, hopefully they’ll free the reviews from the self-absorbed bloviating found on most crowd sourced options and keep things straight, to the point, and useful.