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	<title>Dear Dara</title>
	<link>http://deardara.com</link>
	<description>Just another WordPress weblog</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:22:34 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Another Wine Critic Is Born</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My two year old was very interested in my Syrah at dinner tonight. It&#8217;s a red wine, I told her helpfully. 
&#8220;No!&#8221; she thundered back, scowling and scrunching her little face into a mask that might indicate smiling for the camera and might indicate great displeasure. 
&#8220;No?&#8221; I asked. 
&#8220;It&#8217;s purple,&#8221; she explained. &#8220;In a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://deardara.com/?p=185</link>
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		<title>Thinking About Giving Up On Under-$15 Chardonnay</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I had a Chardonnay round-up fall through recently and so have been drinking my research materials. My conclusion: There are many, many beautiful Chardonnays out there, but hardly a one under $15 or so retail. Are there good cheap whites under $15? Lots, and especially European country wines like Portugese Vinho Verde, and Sauvignon Blanc [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://deardara.com/?p=183</link>
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		<title>Gourmet Live: So Two Weeks Ago</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When news broke this morning that Gourmet, the best food magazine ever (to which I contributed now and then) was being brought back as Gourmet Live, not a magazine, but a holy meeting point of Foursquare, Facebook, Ipads/Ipods, Twitter, and Gourmet&#8217;s back-catalog I felt sad. It wasn&#8217;t just that the concept was pathetic, though it [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://deardara.com/?p=180</link>
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		<title>Come Drink South African Wine With Me!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What are you doing Wednesday night? Come drink wine with the chef de cuisine of Minnesota&#8217;s finest white tablecloth restaurant, La Belle Vie, and me. Tickets are $25 for two, and you get two Riedel glasses to take home, wine, and food for your trouble, as well as that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://deardara.com/?p=178</link>
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		<title>Gazela Rosé: Pretty Sparkling Soda Water</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I was a big fan of Gazela vinho verde last summer: Refreshing, zippy, zingy, lemony, with just enough weight to balance the zip and zing and make it feel like wine and not carbonated water. And cheap! What&#8217;s not to like? I bought a case. But the bottle I tried a few weeks ago was [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://deardara.com/?p=176</link>
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		<title>Beringer Private Reserve 2008 Chardonnay: Kiss kiss kiss! I love you.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Dinner tonight: A whole chicken on the grill, sugar snap peas from the farmer&#8217;s market, grilled bread, and 2008 Beringer Private Reserve 2008 Napa Valley Chardonnay. What a pretty, lithesome, charming wine. Just one of those bottles that you open up and suddenly your backyard dinner into something polished and memorable. The wine was really [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://deardara.com/?p=174</link>
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		<title>China is the New US; Viagra the New Champagne; Taittinger the New Nostradamus!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Amusing item in Decanter  quoting Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger,  chief executive of the esteemed old Champagne house Taittinger (and a guy who&#8217;s probably never had a bad day of drinking in his life.) 
Quoth Taittinger, the guy (not the company): 
&#8220;China is the new United States. There is no doubt that it will be a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://deardara.com/?p=168</link>
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		<title>English Wine Makes Me Gloomy, But Not How You&#8217;d Think&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Decanter reports that a pub in England has debuted the world&#8217;s first all-British wine list. I imagined this was coming, the same calciferous geographical ridge that makes the best-in-the-world wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy also underlies Britain, and comes up here and there. No really!  A few months ago a British sparkling wine in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://deardara.com/?p=165</link>
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		<title>Needlessly Specific Wine Pairings, A Trend Which Must Die!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This Sunset magazine wine-pairing feature is a great example of something that must have a stake driven into its heart. 
Yeah, Moroccan barbecued lamb chops with Cabernet Franc. That&#8217;s needlessly intimidating. First of all, who makes Moroccan barbecued lamb chops? And if you did, I can think of a dozen things that would go well [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://deardara.com/?p=159</link>
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		<title>The Unbearable Pretense of Matt Kramer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My Wine Spectator all-access subscription is worth the hundred million dollars a year I pay for it if only so I can read gems like this from Matt Kramer, the esteemed wine critic, who took it upon himself recently to expound upon the essential &#8220;truths&#8221; of wine. Such as: 
You can never understand a wine [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://deardara.com/?p=152</link>
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