A lifestyle blog by Allison Arbuthnot on The Whole 9

Allison was raised on the vine in Sonoma, California, and believes that life is too short to drink bad wine, count calories, or second-guess your destiny. She now lives in Los Angeles where she practices many things, the two most important being contentment and tricks for opening a wine bottle without a wine key.

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Monthly Archives: March 2010

BioBuzz, Part II

March 30, 2010
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The school of biodynamic winemaking preaches that the experience of a wine—the smell, the mouthfeel, the many ways a glass of wine engages the senses—will differ depending on how the stars in the sky are positioned on the day it is uncorked (although they are careful to avoid the hocus-pocus sounding term astrology in favor [...]

BioBuzz, Part I

March 22, 2010
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One of the greatest aspects of my old job leading wine tastings in San Francisco was that I got to peer into the mind of the wine consumer, both amateur and professional, to examine why they wanted the things they wanted.  I could watch trends rise and fall like the tides of the bay, consumers [...]

Cowboy Cab

March 15, 2010
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I love me an Alexander Valley Cab.  They vary, of course, but in general, AV Cabernets are swollen with flavor, loosely structured and bursting at the seams.  Like Alexander Valley itself, AV Cabs represent what Sonoma County is at its essence: vivacious, slightly hedonistic cowboy country where the senses matter more than pretenses and no [...]

Learning to Box

March 8, 2010
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The two opponents enter the ring.  Each is hopping in anticipation—left, right, left, right—toweling off the beads of anxious sweat that have formed on their foreheads before the match has even begun.  Huddled in their respective corners, the mood is tense, the room dark.  The ties on their gloves are given one last pull, their [...]

Sunshine and Sauvignon

March 1, 2010
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Yesterday I had a hankering. Sitting in my room at home, I watched the mid-afternoon sunshine stream through open blinds over sliding glass doors, painting pinstripes of light on the walls all around me. Birds chirped excitedly in the backyard. Regardless of Saturday’s rain, Spring is in the air in Southern California, and I can [...]