DRIVEN Blog
Restaurant Watch: Tapas, Anyone?
Running a business in NYC involves tons of fine restaurant dining (no complaints here). But once in a while, I have the chance to dine out just for the joy of eating. Recently, Michael and a dear friend from the west coast joined me at…
Diva-fied: The Takeaway from our Strategic Dining Workshop
There is a theory that the most organized people are always buying books on organization. Last Thursday’s Dining Divas participants might have given this theory legs. These women have oodles of emotional intelligence and are rising stars in their fields, yet…
Auld Lang Syne Language: Let’s Talk Bubbly!
Welcome to your year’s-end mission to celebrate in style. If you’re like me, you look forward to times like these to cast austerity aside for a few days, and treat yourself and others to the finer things. Sometimes though, there is apprehension in deciding just what those finer...
Holiday Cheers: The Stress-Reduced Christmas Wine Shopping Experience
The holiday shopping frenzy is fully in progress, and if you’re the host of a Christmas gathering, you’re on double duty. Factor in that you may not feel confident walking into a wine shop and choosing just the right accompaniments, and…
Poppin’ Corks! WAC’s Sparkling Wine Event Bubbles Over with Insight
If you were one of the lucky participants of last Thursday’s Women’s Advancement Compact “All That Sparkles” wine event at Appellation Wine & Spirits in Chelsea, you would have walked away with not just a euphoric wine buzz and the flavor of…
The Office Holiday Party: Same Folks, Different Rules
Office holiday parties are right around the corner. For some, it’s just another networking event. For others, it’s the one chance per year to socialize with colleagues. While it can be said that we spend more time with these folks than with our families, being…
Talkin’ Turkey Too: A Feast of Fizz
If you read our Thanksgiving wine blog post from last week, you hopefully dialed down your holiday stress level a bit, and narrowed the field for yourself on Thanksgiving wine choices. So, I’m back this week to complicate things all over again by letting you in on secret…
Sliding Into Autumn, Fork In Hand
Farmer Market's are decadent with produce right about now! Visiting the Union Square Farmer’s Market always adds to an adventurous Saturday in New York. If you haven’t yet experienced this vast bazaar…
Frustrated by Fragrance
Michael and I attended two wine trade shows in one day last week….our first of the season. Tasting season presents the opportunity for importers and distributors to get ‘em all in the same room at once— shop owners, wine directors, somms, wine educators, columnists, bloggers and the press, creating a buzz around their…
Beverage Break: A Grape by Any Other Name
Something exciting has happened in our New York wine market in the new millennium, and it’s gaining more traction each month. In fact, you could almost define this phenomenon as directly coinciding with the emergence of countless new, small wine importers, and the “stepping up” of the more progressive importers who set up shop in…
Beverage Break: Take Me To Rioja!
The well-traveled Deborah “Goldie” Goldstein has been through Europe countless times, but has somehow managed to disregard Spain. She, like I, typically think of Europe (or any place in the global viticultural belt, for that matter) in respect to the taste of their regional wines first. Our combined passion for enjoying Spanish juice, multiplied by the fact that I’ve had the fortune of visiting Spain twice…