WINE

Bottles for big occasions

Life goes on despite the economy. Graduations, weddings, anniversaries are rites of passage that call for celebratory meals with fine, congratulatory wines. This can be hard with money tight.

WINE

Trading cattle for grapes

If you were going to create a winery, wouldn't it be nice to start from scratch? You could if you were a multimillionaire businessman like Jerry Brassfield. The son of a Fresno, Calif., rancher, he left home at 19 to found his own empire -- direct sales of vitamins and nutritional supplements in 50 countries, half a dozen car dealerships, restaurant stock.

WINE

Sauvignon blanc going tropical

Grass, sagebrush and herbs. Slate, wet stones and mouth-puckering citrus. Mango, kiwi and ruby-red grapefruit. Flavorless viscosity, like vodka without the fun.

WEBSITE

Bring your own wine

Here's a sign of the times: The new website gobyo.com has easy-to-use listings of restaurants in 10 U.S. metropolitan areas -- including South Florida -- that welcome diners who tote their own wine.

WINE

Pubs to pinot in summer reads

You're headed to the beach this summer and, as light reading, you're going to polish off War and Peace. Right. Let me suggest something more realistic: nice summer reading about wine, beer and booze. Here are some good new offerings:

WINE

Deliveries from Down Under

In 1992, Kim and Mark Longbottom started a winery in Australia's Padthaway district in the country's cool southern region, a three-hour drive from the chilly Antarctic Sea.

WINE

Aiming to please, at a good price

It's a little like the auto industry. Winemakers, understanding our sour economic mood, are scrambling to please us. They're not always lowering prices on existing products; instead, they're creating new blends, even new wines, at lower prices. And if they already have popular wines at popular prices, they're taking them off the lower shelves and placing them at eye-level so we will notice them.

WINE

Chill with sparklers

``Drink champagne for no reason at all.'' That's one of Life's Little Instructions, from the chirpy little list by H. Jackson Brown that's on the wall in my dentist's office. It comes after ''Call your mother'' and before ``Always wear polished shoes.''

WINE

Cecchi updates tradition

''Tradition doesn't mean old wines,'' says Andrea Cecchi, fourth-generation winemaker of Cecchi Family Estates. `The future should not be a repetition of the past, but an improvement over it.''

WINE

More women work the vines

Vintner Karen Cakebread can remember when women in wine were a rare vintage. Fast forward a decade or so and Cakebread is launching her own line of wines, Ziata, made by a woman winemaker, named after Cakebread's mom and being released, naturally, on Mother's Day.

WINE

23 good wines for $10 or less

I received this e-mail from Frank Makowski of Homestead: ``As a longtime reader and subscriber of The Miami Herald, I would like to advise you that you have lost touch with your readership. I usually glance at your column and sometimes read it, when the prices of wines that you evaluate are in my price range. I feel that most people are buying 750-milliliter bottles in the $5 to $10 range and 1.5-liter bottles in the $8 to $15 range. Your cheapest wine in today's column was $26. In case you haven't...

WINE

Taste blends before they get bubbly

I had a chance once to taste a pinot noir wine, in its still form, that was going to be blended with chardonnay and pinot meunier and given bubbles to produce one of the world's top-name champagnes.

WINE

FIU professor reaches out to China (and blogs about it)

Professor Barry Gump has taught wine appreciation for three decades, to college students in California and, now, at Florida International University. He may need all that experience in his new gig -- teaching tasting, analysis and appreciation to college students in China.

WINE

Gaja brunello worth a wait

``Wine is not a necessity. Bread is a necessity. Wine is a luxury.'' It's not what you expect to hear from the daughter of the famous Italian wine patriarch Angelo Gaja.

WINE

Springtime sips for less than $20

Greet spring with refreshing, easygoing wines. Here's a bin of winners, all less than $20. SEVEN BEAUTIES The 2007 Beringer Knights Valley Alluvium White ($18) is a first-class blend sparked by sauvignon blanc, semillon, chardonnay and viognier -- citrusy, minerally, versatile and a terrific deal.

WINE

'64 Riscal Rioja a taste sensation

Wine writers spend a lot of time tasting wines that aren't really ready to drink. Winemakers on media tours usually pour their latest vintage -- the one that's about to go on sale. Often, it's been in the bottle for less than a year. A couple of times a year, though, a winemaker brings one that has aged for decades into its ultimate destiny. It happened at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival in February when José Luis Muguiro Aznar, owner of the Marqués de Riscal estate...

WINE

It's not all about chianti under the Tuscan sun

Whenever wine fans visit Tuscany, which is as often as they can, they go looking for chianti, its signature wine. ''Tuscany is about food and wine, and one grape -- sangiovese -- is the heart and soul of Tuscan wine,'' says Laura DePasquale, master sommelier and vice president of fine wine for the importer Palm Bay International.

WINE

Complex, subtle Jaboulet syrahs

Is your favorite wine from France's Rhne Valley more expensive these days, even in the midst of a worldwide recession? Don't ask Frédéric Jaboulet to apologize. He's the sixth-generation descendant of Antoine Jaboulet, who founded the chateau in 1834. And he's still working to improve it.

WINE

Babes and bargains beckon at SoBe Fest

It was the South Beach Wine & Food Festival at its most charming: 70 degrees with a light breeze -- perfect wine tasting weather in the big, white tents on the sand beside the Atlantic Ocean in Miami Beach.

SOUTH BEACH WINE & FOOD FESTIVAL

Billy Joel's wife tastefully gets in the spirit

Celebrity chef Katie Lee Joel had a blast with friends Paula Deen and Guy Fieri Friday night during her South Beach Wine and Food Festival sponsored event held at Table 8 Restaurant, inside the Hotel De Soleil.

South Beach's grand festival weekend

It's true. South Beach does have a reputation for inhabiting its fair share of waif-like models and buff gym rats. But the island (as well as the rest of Miami) has become quite the culinary hot spot, proving that we like to eat with the best of 'em.

Tickets still available for many SoBe wine fest events

Tickets remained for a number of high-profile events as the South Beach Wine & Food Festival began its second day, a sharp departure from the early sellouts of previous years.

South Beach Wine and Food Festival schedule

The South Beach Wine and Food Festival is a star-studded destination event showcasing wine and spirits producers, chefs and culinary personalities held at various venues in Miami Beach and Coral Gables Feb. 19-22; $20-$1,000. 877-762-3933, www.sobewineandfoodfest.com. (Ticket availability subject to change.)

Exploring the wines of Spain

Two tales of Spanish wine: Story one: Years ago, I visited the Federico Paternina winery in Rioja and toured its oldest cellars, so deep and dank the labels had rotted away and the only way we could tell even the decade in which the wines had been made was by their position in the cellar. We drank a rioja from the 1930s. It was an almost-religious experience.

SOUTH BEACH WINE & FOOD FESTIVAL

Authentic Mexican: It's the whole enchilada for Bayless

Rick Bayless has spent 30 years spreading his love of regional Mexican food around the United States, but the legendary Chicago chef says south-of-the-border fare has been a tough sell in South Florida.

Seminar to put Spanish 'Superstars' in the spotlight

''Scorched earth'' wines. Wines from secret projects. These and other examples of what's new and hot in Spanish wine will be featured in the ''Spanish Superstars'' seminar from 1 to 2 p.m. Saturday at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival.

FIU student-chefs run South Beach Wine & Food Festival kitchens

It's 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Martha Stewart's due in town any minute and the student chefs in charge of her kitchen prepping for the South Beach Wine & Food Festival can't find the right mustard.

Parents need to weigh in on kids' eating habits

Parents play a key role in shaping young eating habits and attitudes about food, nutritionists say. But, too often, they're sending mixed signals.

SOUTH BEACH WINE & FOOD FESTIVAL

South Beach Wine and Food Festival puts frugal deals on the table

A two-for-one sweetheart discount is one of the deals on the table at this year's Wine & Food Festival, as organizers adjust to a lean economy.

Guy Fieri is serious about food, dude

You could say 2006 was a pretty decent year for Guy Fieri. At 38, the little-known Northern California restaurateur blazed a trail to celebrity chefdom by wowing judges on the second season of The Next Food Network Star.

CELEBRITIES

Bobby Flay's love affairs with N.Y., food -- and politics?

Bobby Flay, the native New Yorker who champions Southwestern cuisine and made his name by elevating chile peppers, cilantro and corn, may put his culinary career on the back burner one of these days, he says.

Exhibit elevates Chateau Mouton Rothschild wine labels

On a cold evening in Paris, the Baroness Philippine de Rothschild of Chateau Mouton Rothschild is contemplating a jaunt to warm, if somewhat less civilized, Miami for the great international road show that is the Mouton Rothschild: Paintings for the Labels exhibition. The assemblage of some 60 original pieces of art from such masters as Pablo Picasso, Saul Steinberg and -- of course -- Andy Warhol, culled over the course of more than six decades and used to illustrate the bottles of respective vintages...

WINE

Infestation was blessing for pinot noir

When California started getting serious about making fine wine, in the 1960s and 1970s, it had little experience in where to plant which grapes. So it made mistakes. One of the big ones was in failing to plant pinot noir grapes in cool areas.

WINE

Castello Banfi's new BelnerO is no shy wine

A dark beauty is moving into the neighborhood. I'm not being sexist. That's the direct translation of BelnerO, Castello Banfi's newest Italian wine, which arrives in U.S. shops March 1.

SCENE IN THE TROPICS

Rachael Ray to host bash during South Beach wine fest

We hear that superstar chef Rachael Ray will not only host the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival's Burger Bash on Feb. 19, but she's rumored to be throwing the SoBe Soundcheck, a big party on Feb. 20 at the Hotel Victor.

SUPER BOWL

Beers to you for Sunday's big game

Ohhh, all right, since it's Super Bowl Sunday I suppose we can drink beer. I mean, even a wine freak like me understands that a subtle Chassagne-Montrachet is out of place where 350-pound linemen clash.

WINE

From cellar rat to respected vintner

Don't ask Michael Trujillo to be modest about his vineyards. ''There's no greater location on the face of the globe,'' he says. He makes a good argument. Sequoia Grove is in the middle of California's Napa Valley, right on the famous Rutherford bench (a slightly elevated plateau), with neighbors like Beaulieu Vineyards and Robert Mondavi's Opus One. It's where the cabernet sauvignons taste of what iconic winemaker Andre Tchelistcheff called ''Rutherford dust'' -- a hint of earth, maybe a bit of mocha...

WINE

Hurrah for syrah, a forgiving grape

Syrah has always been one of my favorite grapes. Grown in France's Northern Rhne Valley, it makes an august, powerful wine that tastes of black plums, licorice, spice and black pepper and has a powerful opulence that improves when aged 10 years or more.

Washington State: The nation's other wine country

When hard-charging former Texas Instruments exec Kathy Charlton offered Bordeaux winemaker Benoit Murat a job in her new winery on the Pacific Ocean side of Seattle in 1999, he wondered if she was serious.