Scott Paul Wines is a boutique winery dedicated to producing ultra-premium Pinot Noirs from the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Proprietor and winemaker, Scott Paul Wright, came to winemaking as a second career. For thirty years, he had a career in the radio and music industries. As a disc jockey, his handle was “Shadow Stevens” and those of you from the East Coast remember him well. His financial success in the music world allowed him to cellar and drink good wine from an early age. As the music business became more and more a corporate-driven industry, Scott lost interest in continuing in that field, and left to learn winemaking.

Under the mentorship of Greg Le Follette and others, and taking inspiration from Burgundy, he developed his winemaking skills. After ten vintages in Oregon, he is now very comfortable with his career change.

For more info on Scott Paul Wines: www.scottpaul.com

Sponsor: The Beaches of South Walton: www.beachesofsouthwalton.com

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• Milano's Boccondivino - The Divine Mouthful

• Sherry: Use it or Lose it

• Gita! Day Tripping Italian Style

• Bar Mimmo: Finding Puglia in Lombardia

As the head bartender at the famed New York restaurant One if by Land, Two if by Sea, Mike Lombardozzi knows a thing or two about martinis. But even he was surprised when he replaced the premium vodka in his specially created Pomegranate martini with O2 Sparkling Vodka, the first of its kind.

Martini Alert - Inventor's O2 SPARKLING VODKA Comes to U.S. from England

"Everyone says that it is the best martini they have ever had," says Lombardozzi, who has christened the drink the CosmO2.

O2 is the creation of Philip Maitland, a British entrepreneur and inventor, who spent two years researching and developing a process to create a sparkling spirit.

"Many thought it would be impossible," says Maitland, "but I persevered and was awarded a patent in 2003."

(a salad to die for) Scott Wilson, a practical-joking, golf-loving college buddy of mine, was an unlikely cooking teacher. Scott had no apparent interest in the culinary arts. He was, however, putting himself through business school by preparing Caesar salads tableside at a swish restaurant. One Saturday, in my quest to live beyond my means and impress a dinner date, I woke him up at two in the afternoon and begged for a tutorial. The heady aroma, pungent dressing and built-in theatrics had hooked me instantly. Twenty years, hundreds of salads and several truckloads of romaine lettuce later, I've fine-tuned the ingredients and learned to articulate the nuances that'll make or break a Caesar. I'm so obsessed with the ritual that I carry my well-worn salad bowl with me in a snare drum case when I take my show on the road. Pool sharks travel with their own cues; the concept is the same (and it doesn't hurt that flight attendants mistake me for a drummer). Most Caesar aficionados know where to find the best salad and are usually willing to trek miles across town to satisfy their craving. But few ever attempt to make one from scratch. Contrary to what anyone in a chef's hat might want you to believe, there are no secret ingredients or difficult techniques. However, a quintessential Caesar requires the harmonic convergence of several high-quality ingredients and some focus. In order to demystify the process, and make you the mac daddy of garlicky greens, I've isolated the most essential components. Since the recipe was published in my first book, The Surreal Gourmet: real food for pretend chefs, I've received dozens of letters from readers who've mastered the dressing and been deified by their friends. The ultimate compliment came from a waitress in Toronto who took me aside and whispered, "Every time I make your Caesar salad for a date, I get laid." I should be so lucky. 1) the bowl Most restaurants, and many home cooks, commit their first faux pas by selecting the wrong tool for the job. By using a blender or food processor to mix the dressing, they whip the yolk, giving the dressing an undesirable mayonnaise-like texture. The definitive salad begins with a large unfinished wooden bowl (i.e., not coated with a shiny lacquer). The rough interior wall of the bowl provides the perfect surface for blending ingredients. The best bowls are usually bored out of one solid slab of Vermont maple. (Martha would probably chop down the tree and chisel it out herself. But we have better ways to spend our time.) 2) the grind Once the aforementioned bowl's in hand, facilitating the successful marriage of the ingredients becomes an intensely physical activity worthy of Olympic designation. Use the back of a soup spoon and a healthy amount of pressure to grind the ingredients one at a time in a repetitive circular motion against the entire interior wall of the bowl. It should take approximately 20 seconds for each new ingredient to blend with the existing ingredients and form a smooth paste. 3) the garlic Accept no substitute. Use only fresh garlic. When buying garlic, look for a firm bulb. As it gets older and moves past its prime, the bulb loses firmness and green sprouts appear in each clove. At all costs, avoid dried, powdered garlic, the runt of the garlic family. And be wary of elephant garlic, a much blander version of the regular-size bulb. 4) the lettuce Pret-a-manger designer salad greens may be gracing fashionable plates everywhere, but Romaine remains the accessory of choice for Caesars because it wears the heavy dressing so well. If you must substitute, use another hearty lettuce. After washing the lettuce, use a lettuce spinner or towel to remove all water. For maximum crispness, return the lettuce to the refrigerator until just before serving. If you're preparing the lettuce several hours in advance, you can avoid browning edges by cutting the leaves with a sharp knife instead of tearing them. 5) the cheese This is probably the single most important element of a great Caesar. Imported Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano is produced exclusively in a small region of northern Italy. Its distinctive taste and grainy texture are unmistakable. Cheesemakers from this region adhere to a stringent code of rules regarding what the cows are fed and how long the cheese is aged (at least two years). A food writer at The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Once you get a taste of the real stuff -- crumbly, earthy and rich as wine -- there's no turning back: Everything else is sawdust." After you've added Parmigiano-Reggiano to your cooking repertoire, you'll be forced to adopt guerilla defense tactics to protect the ungrated cheese. Roaming dinner guests tend to circle the wedge like hungry sharks and will devour it the second you turn to spin-dry the lettuce. 6) the anchovy Don't be intimidated by the sight and taste of anchovies. When blended along with the other ingredients into a paste, the distinctive anchovy taste is unidentifiable. So why use it? Because along with the garlic and Dijon mustard, the anchovy provides the essence of the Caesar dressing, which all of the remaining ingredients serve to enhance. Modern technology has graced us with fish in a tube. Anchovy paste blends well and provides the perfect solution to the old problem of using one anchovy and tossing out the rest of the school. 7) the croutons Nothing's more anticlimactic than topping a finely tuned Caesar with store-bought croutons that were destined for turkey stuffing. Homemade croutons, cut from any leftover thickly sliced bread, are the hidden jewels of the salad (see recipe below). "Gourmet-style" croutons made by cottage industry suppliers are a suitable replacement if you have more money than time. 8) the legacy A great Caesar salad should knock you off your chair, then smack you again as you struggle to regain your senses. I can appreciate the fact that not everyone likes to wrestle with a salad, but that's why man created bottled dressing. If you elect to leave out the garlic or use the ingredients sparingly, please don't let anyone know it's my recipe.

Croutons (enough to top one salad) 3 thick slices of slightly stale sourdough or rustic country-style bread cut into 3/4-inch cubes 3 T olive oil 1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 2) Place bread cubes in a large bowl and add olive oil. Toss and squish the bread like a sponge until the oil is evenly absorbed. 3) Place croutons on a baking sheet or aluminum foil and bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Try not to forget about them in the oven as I often do.

Seizure Salad (Serves 6) 1/4 t salt 1 t coarsely ground black pepper 3 garlic cloves, minced 2 anchovies (or 1 t anchovy paste) 2 t Dijon mustard (the real stuff, not the dried stuff) 1 egg yolk, coddled* 1 1/2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 t Worcestershire sauce 1/4 cup safflower oil, or olive oil 1 1/2 t red wine vinegar 1 large head romaine lettuce, outer leaves discarded, remaining leaves washed and thoroughly dried. If lettuce looks anorexic or is in need of a serious trim, buy two heads 1 1/2 cups croutons (see recipe that follows) 1/2 cup grated imported Italian Parmegiano-Reggiano * When I cook for others, the fear of a class-action lawsuit drives me to coddle. Place the eggs, in their shell, in boiling water 40 seconds. Remove, run under cold water 15 seconds to stop the cooking process, then use as directed. 1) Add salt and pepper to the salad bowl (this creates a sandpaper-like base that'll make the next steps easier). Using the back of a soup spoon, grind garlic against the wall of the bowl until it becomes a paste. Then add anchovies, and once again use the back of the spoon to grind it into a paste. Follow the same procedure, adding the Dijon, egg yolk, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce one at a time. Make sure that each ingredient is blended into a smooth paste with the previous ingredients before proceeding. 2) Add oil and vinegar. Blend well. 3) Tear or slice lettuce leaves into bite-sized pieces and add to the salad bowl. Toss thoroughly with dressing. 4) Add croutons and cheese, toss again, then serve immediately. Notes: If you don't have a rough wooden salad bowl, the dressing can be made (with some sacrifice) in a blender. Add salt, pepper, garlic, anchovies, Dijon, lemon juice, Worcestershire and vinegar. Purée. Then add the oil and pulse a few times. Add egg yolk and pulse a couple more times - just enough to blend it without causing the dressing to turn mayonnaisey. The lettuce leaves should be coated, but not soaked, in dressing. Adjust the amount of dressing as necessary to keep salad from becoming too "wet."

Review by Tim Patterson.

Biodynamic grapegrowing and winemaking have gotten a great deal of press in recent years, far out of proportion to the planted acreage involved. Much like the coverage for the adventures of Britney Spears--also wildly outstripping the extent of her creative resume--biodynamics write-ups have tended toward the sensational, even the salacious, emphasizing the ritual usage of cow dung and excursions into pop astrology.

At the same time, there is no denying that the international Who's Who of biodynamic growers and winemakers turns out some mighty tasty wine--Chapoutier in the Rhone, Zind Humbrecht and Ostertag in Alsace, Domaine Leroy and LeFlaive in Burgundy, Nikolaihof in Austria, Sinskey and Araujo in California, the list goes on and on. Chances are these folks are doing something right.

So when, in the midst of this perplex, there comes a book written by a leading Franch practitioner of the biodynamic arts, Loire winemaker Nicolas Joly (somehow Americanized as Nicholas with an "h" for this edition), and it bears the tell-all title, Biodynamic Wine, Demystified, inquiring minds may want to snap it up.

Be forewarned that the book delivers nothing resembling the promise of its title. You might well want to read it, but not in hopes of figuring out, say, what science may lay behind the alleged effects of the phases of the moon on the growing cycle or the soil chemistry findings that validate the cherished cow plops. Very few of the 174 pages of Biodynamic Wine, Demystified are devoted to the examination of practical, hands-on techniques, fewer in fact than in Joly's earlier book (1999), Wine from Sky to Earth. Rather, the purpose of the volume is to advance a philosophical perspective, a central tenet of which is that if there is nothing mystical left to enrich the process of making wine, there's no point in doing it.

The chapter on The Cellar, the longest in the book, is a good example. Judging from the title, you might expect here some explanation of what difference it makes when wine movements are timed to the lunar calendar, or perhaps some tips on avoiding spoilage without the use of chemicals. Instead, we get disquisitions about Euclid and Hippocrates, ramblings about the nature of gravity, electricity and magnetism, an exegesis of the Platonic theory of Forms, a detour into the law of harmonies, and much, much more.

These arguments don't read like anything recognizably scientific (let alone relevant) until we realize that Joly--like Rudolf Steiner, the early 20th century founder of biodynamics, before him--has an entirely different view of what science is. For Steiner/Joly, ancient science was on the right track and medieval science was better yet. But when the Enlightenment hit, bringing rationalism, empiricism, and the experimental method with it, True Science got lost in the shuffle. Perhaps Joly's most dismissive epithet comes when he calls an idea "Cartesian," that is, in the manner of the 17th century French philosopher Rene Descartes--known to history for helping invent the calculus, not for his winemaking skills.

Along the way, Joly does take impassioned swipes at a number of contemporary commercial winemaking practices--the use of cultivated yeast strains that change a grape's inherent aromatic profile, injecting tiny amounts of oxygen to speed up the aging process, or condensing grape must by removing water in order to make a more concentrated wine. All these practices are, for Joly, inevitable outgrowths of adopting the mechanistic, overly materialistic worldview that passes for modern science. He issues a call to return to the winemaking practices of the 1940s and 1950s--a terrifying thought to most anyone involved in the wine industry.

As an exercise in armchair philosophy and amateur intellectual history, Joly's book is a captivating read. He's intensely committed to the positions he argues, and he constantly surprises the reader with yet another excursion into something unexpected. What other wine book (since the 12th century) offers a refresher on The Four Temperaments, Choleric, Sanguine, Phlegmatic and Melancholy?

The fundamental reason Joly is so worked up is that he's convinced that modern winemaking obliterates the power of terroir, the expression of a place in its wines and other agricultural products. He's got a point, and nearly all of the practitioners of biodynamics I've interviewed over the years say that's what got them intrigued by the system in the first place. Biodynamics takes organic farming practices and wraps them as broader conception of the farm / the vineyard as a coherent organism, where inputs and outputs of resources work in harmony. It's a stark contrast to the industrial, agro-chemical model--first sterilize the land, then pump it full of petroleum derivatives.

Signing on for the program in no way requires embracing Joly's ideas about Platonic Forms, nor does it require, according so some prominent biodynamic winemakers, staying awake during Joly's periodic lecture tours. There's the philosophy--and then there's a winery to run.

If you haven't had a Humanities 110 refresher for a while, read this book. If you want to understand the nitty-gritty of natural winemaking techniques in the vineyard and the cellar, keep browsing.

Nicholas Joly, Biodynamic Wine, Demystified, Wine Appreciation Guild, 2008, $24.95 (Paperback).

Tim Patterson writes for several wine magazines, blogs at Blind Muscat's Cellarbook, and co-edits the Vinography book review section.

1992 Leasingham Classic Clare Sparkling Shiraz
Cherry, raspberry and some leather and earthy elements to the nose. There is a delicious sweetness to the palate that is well countered by savoury nuances. Very enjoyable.
90/100

2000 Besserat de Bellefon Grande Tradition Champagne
Cheesy and toasty nose. Rounded mouthfeel. Lacks depth and finishes short.
83/100

2002 Petaluma Hanlin Hill Riesling
Lemon, orange peel and some toast aromas starting to develop. The palate is long and full, with incredible intensity. This wine holds so much future potential.
93/100

1978 Chateau La Tour Haut-Brion
Tobacco, bramble, ash and smoke on the nose. The tannins are fully resolved, leading to a medium bodied palate with soft fruits and good aged character. Very pleasant to drink wine at its peak.
89/100

1996 Chateau Léoville-Poyferré
Youthful nose of blackberry, spice, cassis and cedar. Intensely tannic on the palate, but the structure is good and this is going to improve greatly once the tannins soften and it takes on additional complexity. Needs time.
90/100

1981 Chateau Musar
Cherry/kirsch, smoked meats, earth and honey. The palate shows amazing fruit sweetness that is balanced superbly by aged earthy, spicy characters. Complex and long. If this was deconstructed too much you may be able to pick out many faults, but amazingly all mixed together they have achieved harmony.
94/100

2000 Hochar Père et Fils
Horsey, with earth, raspberry and a touch of VA. The palate is sweet and soft, it is quite drinkable but looked very simple in comparison to the older Musar had before. Will probably show better given time.
87/100

1995 Antinori Tignanello
Cocoa, blackcurrants, graphite and cedary nose. Lovely medium bodied, savoury palate with excellent balance.
91/100

1991 Penfolds Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon
A bold nose, with tobacco, cassis and blackberry. The youthfulness of the wine is evident on the palate as well, with primary fruit still dominant. The tannin structure and overall build of the wine is such that I think this has the potential for greatness.
92/100

2004 Gangloff Côte-Rôtie La Barbarine
Must be close to 10% viognier in this, but it did not bother me as it did some others at the table. Very pretty nose, with lifted fragrant floral notes, apricot and pepper. Long and rich in the mouth with some spice evident. A little bit young still tonight, but very nice anyway.
90/100

2004 Tyrrell’s Shiraz Cabernet Vat 8
Earthy, with some raspberry notes as well. Bright, red fruited palate with some earthiness coming through in the background. Tannins are bold, but should settle with time.
88/100

1998 Pfeiffer Tokay Auslese
Caramel, toffee and apple aromas. Medium body and sweetness. Ready to drink now, it could do with some more complexity but I don’t think it has the structure to age much more.
85/100

1998 Müller-Catoir Haardter Mandelring Scheurebe Auslese
Passionfruit, spice, peach and pineapple aromas. Lovely, lingering sweetness to the palate and it just has the acid to keep it fresh and balanced. This style of wine is right up my alley.
93/100

1995 Hétszolo Tokaji Aszu 6 Puttonyos
Honey, coconut, pineapple and maple syrup. Rich, honey like palate, but with excellent complexity and acidity. Fantastic length, this was a great wine to finish the evening with.
93/100