This gift basket includes Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider (Non-Alcoholic), Partners Crackers, Portlock Smoked Salmon, Top Corn White Chocolate Popcorn, Anna?s Pantry Pistachios and Mixed Nuts, Mille Lacs Cheese Spread, and Chukar Cabernet Chocolate Cherries. Some items may vary due to availability. Substitutions made will be of equal or greater value.

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Customer Review: Useless

What good is a wine book in which the tasting notes are at least 14 months old? Virtually all of the most recent wines mentioned are long gone from retail shelves. Sure there are notes on wines released in the last few years, but the tasting notes are only the original tasting notes--no indication of what has happened to the wine since its release. All this work for naught. PASS PASS PASS IMHO.

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This is the first of its kind: an insider's food guide to that gourmand's paradise, the Napa Valley. Author and longtime resident Lori Lyn Narlock goes behind the scenes to discover where chefs shop, the best places to take a cooking class, or where to get a grapeseed oil massage. With complete details on the where, when, how, and how much, plus dozens of artful black-and-white photographs, this indispensible guide for food lovers even includes 50 recipes honoring the region's local specialties. It's a mouthwatering roster of the best that Napa has to offer.

Customer Review: Don't go to Napa without this book!

Have been to Napa many times - but was unaware of the many gems this book uncovers - an incredible and fun resource for the food and wine lover! I will be seeking out these finds in the future! Highly recommended.

Customer Review: Great overview of Napa

This book covers all the areas I was interested in learning about before our trip to Napa Valley. The reviews seem unbiased and thoughtful. We had visited Napa 18 years ago and while we already had a few ideas, reservations, etc., this guide gave us even more places to consider. I've "earmarked" so many pages and even took this guide with us. It also includes maps, addresses and phone numbers and/or websites. Some good recipes are in the back. A good companion guide.

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An 8 oz. tub of a blend of natural gouda with port wine. Always ready for the appetizer tray, celery or on crackers. Can be frozen and refrozen.

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Garlic has always been an essential ingredient in numerous foods around the world today. The cuisines of Europe, Asia, India, the South Pacific, North and South America all incorporate many forms of garlic in innumerable dishes. You'll love using our Pickled Garlic while cooking or "right-out-of-the-jar" as a wonderful new addition to your cheese or veggie trays. You'll find that they're delicious either way!

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Leonardo Sciascia was an outstanding and controversial presence in twentieth-century Italian literary and intellectual life. Writing about his native Sicily and its culture of secrecy and suspicion, Sciascia matched sympathy with skepticism, unflinching intelligence with a streetfighter's intransigent poise. Sciascia was particularly admired for his short stories, and The Wine-Dark Sea offers what he considered his best work in the genre: thirteen spare and trenchant miniatures that range in subject from village idiots to mafia dons, marital spats to American dreams. Here, in unforgettable form, Sciascia examines the contradictions—sometimes comic, sometimes deadly, and sometimes both—of Sicily's turbulent history and day-to-day life.

Customer Review: Thirteen Exceptional Stories of Sicily

"The Wine-Dark Sea" is a collection of thirteen stories written by Leonardo Sciascia between 1959 and 1972. While less well know in the United States than some of his Italian contemporaries-I think here of Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, Umberto Eco-Sciascia enjoys a well deserved reputation in Italy as a writer of novels, stories and political commentary. Sciascia was a Sicilian. This fact, more than any other, colors all of the stories in this collection. Each of these stories reflects, in some way, the particularities of Sicilian culture and society. There is, of course, the uneasy and often conflicting relationship that Sicily has had with the rest of Italy, particularly the northern part of that country. There is also the pervasive influence of the Mafia on Sicilian life, particularly the strong notions of honor and "omerta," the Mafia code of silence. And there is, finally, the interplay of the tightly knit Sicilian family, the Roman Catholic Church and the Italian state. The best of the stories in this collection are marked by subdued irony, subtle wit and steely-clear insight into the idiosyncrasies that mark Sicilian life within the larger context of Italy. In "A Matter of Conscience," a Sicilian lawyer traveling back home from Rome picks up a women's magazine on the train. He reads an anonymous letter to a priest, written by a woman from his hometown, asking for advice. The woman had an affair with a relative for six months, is tormented by her adultery and wants to know whether she should tell her husband. She relates that, "as a very devout person, I have confessed my fault on several different occasions." She then goes on-drawing the distinction between her Sicilian mores and those of the rest of Italy-as follows: "Every priest except one (but he was a northerner) has told me that if my repentance is sincere, and my love for my husband unchanged, then I must remain silent." From here, the story turns into a witty, ironic exploration of life in the lawyer's town as each of his colleagues becomes obsessed with the thought that he is the cuckold. In "Mafia Western," a big town "on the border between the provinces of Palermo and Trapani" is embroiled in a bloody battle between two feuding mafia cells. It is at the time of World War I and, "the death-toll from assassination [is] comparable to the death-toll of its citizens falling at the front." In dry, matter-of-fact style, Sciascia relates this fictional tale, the interstices of his story relating the society within the society-the society of the mafiosi, the capo and the code of silence. Thus, a mother's son is killed and she knows his assassin. But she remains silent, picking up her son's body and bringing it back home. "The next morning she let it be know that her son died of a wound there upon his bed, but she knew neither where nor by whom he had been wounded. No word did she utter to the carabinieri about the man who might have killed him. But her friends understood-they knew-and they now set about very careful preparations." In "Philology," two men that are to be called before the Commission of Enquiry investigating the activities of the mafia in Sicily engage in an ironic, witty discourse on the origin and meaning of the word "mafia". They are doing this in preparation for their interrogation, their dialogue a bit of dry, absurd humor that conflates the high intellectual pretension of philological discourse with the pragmatic, cold-blooded realities that underlie their preparations. As one of them says, "the fact is that everyone tries to establish the current meaning of the word before establishing its origin." After exploring possible Arabic and French origins of the word, and the deficiencies in education of the general public, who misunderstand the importance of etymology and meaning, he ultimately presents an ironically pragmatic, if high-sounding, statement of the meaning of the word "mafia": "Mafia implies a consciousness of self, an exaggerated concept of the power of the individual as sole arbiter of every conflict of interests or ideas; from this derives the inability to bear with the superiority, and even more, the authority of others. The mafioso expects respect and nearly always offers it. When crossed, he does not appeal to the law, public justice, but takes matters into his own hands and, should the remedy be beyond his own power, he will call on the assistance of like-minded friends." "The Wine-Dark Sea," the longest of the stories in this collection, wonderfully depicts the cultural separation between Sicilians and other Italians. In this story, Bianchi, an engineer traveling to Sicily for the first time, shares a compartment with a Sicilian family and "a girl of about twenty-three" who is attached to the family "by ties of family, friendship or casual acquaintance." Over the course of their long train ride, Bianchi, if only briefly, manages to penetrate the seemingly deep cultural divide between him and the family, along the way also sharing a fleeting romantic connection with the young girl. These are only some of the stories in this collection. There are others that are equally good. In particular, I think of "Demotion" (which provides a fascinating contrapuntal theme of Catholicism and Communism, Saint Filomena and Joseph Stalin) and "The Ransom" (which retells a popular Sicilian folk tale of familial duty, love and betrayal). With the exception of "Apocryphal Correspondence re Crowley," which, at best, is of nothing more than historical interest and utterly unremarkable, "The Wine-Dark Sea" is an exceptionally good collection of stories and a wonderful introduction to an Italian writer that, thus far, has been little read in the United States.

Customer Review: Exceptional Stories of Sicily

"The Wine-Dark Sea" is a collection of thirteen stories written by Leonardo Sciascia between 1959 and 1972. While less well know in the United States than some of his Italian contemporaries-I think here of Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, Umberto Eco-Sciascia enjoys a well deserved reputation in Italy as a writer of novels, stories and political commentary. Sciascia was a Sicilian. This fact, more than any other, colors all of the stories in this collection. Each of these stories reflects, in some way, the particularities of Sicilian culture and society. There is, of course, the uneasy and often conflicting relationship that Sicily has had with the rest of Italy, particularly the northern part of that country. There is also the pervasive influence of the Mafia on Sicilian life, particularly the strong notions of honor and "omerta," the Mafia code of silence. And there is, finally, the interplay of the tightly knit Sicilian family, the Roman Catholic Church and the Italian state. The best of the stories in this collection are marked by subdued irony, subtle wit and steely-clear insight into the idiosyncrasies that mark Sicilian life within the larger context of Italy. In "A Matter of Conscience," a Sicilian lawyer traveling back home from Rome picks up a women's magazine on the train. He reads an anonymous letter to a priest, written by a woman from his hometown, asking for advice. The woman had an affair with a relative for six months, is tormented by her adultery and wants to know whether she should tell her husband. She relates that, "as a very devout person, I have confessed my fault on several different occasions." She then goes on-drawing the distinction between her Sicilian mores and those of the rest of Italy-as follows: "Every priest except one (but he was a northerner) has told me that if my repentance is sincere, and my love for my husband unchanged, then I must remain silent." From here, the story turns into a witty, ironic exploration of life in the lawyer's town as each of his colleagues becomes obsessed with the thought that he is the cuckold. In "Mafia Western," a big town "on the border between the provinces of Palermo and Trapani" is embroiled in a bloody battle between two feuding mafia cells. It is at the time of World War I and, "the death-toll from assassination [is] comparable to the death-toll of its citizens falling at the front." In dry, matter-of-fact style, Sciascia relates this fictional tale, the interstices of his story relating the society within the society-the society of the mafiosi, the capo and the code of silence. Thus, a mother's son is killed and she knows his assassin. But she remains silent, picking up her son's body and bringing it back home. "The next morning she let it be know that her son died of a wound there upon his bed, but she knew neither where nor by whom he had been wounded. No word did she utter to the carabinieri about the man who might have killed him. But her friends understood-they knew-and they now set about very careful preparations." In "Philology," two men that are to be called before the Commission of Enquiry investigating the activities of the mafia in Sicily engage in an ironic, witty discourse on the origin and meaning of the word "mafia". They are doing this in preparation for their interrogation, their dialogue a bit of dry, absurd humor that conflates the high intellectual pretension of philological discourse with the pragmatic, cold-blooded realities that underlie their preparations. As one of them says, "the fact is that everyone tries to establish the current meaning of the word before establishing its origin." After exploring possible Arabic and French origins of the word, and the deficiencies in education of the general public, who misunderstand the importance of etymology and meaning, he ultimately presents an ironically pragmatic, if high-sounding, statement of the meaning of the word "mafia": "Mafia implies a consciousness of self, an exaggerated concept of the power of the individual as sole arbiter of every conflict of interests or ideas; from this derives the inability to bear with the superiority, and even more, the authority of others. The mafioso expects respect and nearly always offers it. When crossed, he does not appeal to the law, public justice, but takes matters into his own hands and, should the remedy be beyond his own power, he will call on the assistance of like-minded friends." "The Wine-Dark Sea," the longest of the stories in this collection, wonderfully depicts the cultural separation between Sicilians and other Italians. In this story, Bianchi, an engineer traveling to Sicily for the first time, shares a compartment with a Sicilian family and "a girl of about twenty-three" who is attached to the family "by ties of family, friendship or casual acquaintance." Over the course of their long train ride, Bianchi, if only briefly, manages to penetrate the seemingly deep cultural divide between him and the family, along the way also sharing a fleeting romantic connection with the young girl. These are only some of the stories in this collection. There are others that are equally good. In particular, I think of "Demotion" (which provides a fascinating contrapuntal theme of Catholicism and Communism, Saint Filomena and Joseph Stalin) and "The Ransom" (which retells a popular Sicilian folk tale of familial duty, love and betrayal). With the exception of "Apocryphal Correspondence re Crowley," which, at best, is of nothing more than historical interest and utterly unremarkable, "The Wine-Dark Sea" is an exceptionally good collection of stories and a wonderful introduction to an Italian writer that, thus far, has been little read in the United States.

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The little something extra that adds extra zing to your favorite seafood creations. Made from fresh, unsalted butter flavored with herbs and wine, tequila and lime, or wasabi and ginger. After baking or grilling, gourmet compound butter is the crowning touch that brings out an uncommonly good flavor in any seafood. Order 4-ounce tubs individually or get the sampler and try all three! butter , butter flavored , butter flavors , \n\n

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Customer Review: Long, but worth it

Yes, this book is a long one, but it is well worth the effort! This is the first in the Merrily Watkins series, and if the rest that follow are as gripping as this one, I for one, can hardly wait to read them. Merrily Watkins is a single-mother of a precocious fifteen-year-old girl named Jane. She also is an Anglican minister. Her first posting is in a small insular English village called Ledwardine. Not much has really changed in Ledwardine as Merrily and Jane find out. The setting is present-day, but the story kept taking us back to the 17th century where a former minister of the old church was found hanging in the orchard. There are long-buried secrets here that are fighting to come out, but the people holding the secrets will stop at nothing to keep things hidden. The book is very well-written. A nice blend of the occult, history, modern suspense and the play of very-well drawn characters.

Customer Review: Intriguing premise in an overly long treatment

The real story does not start until well past page 250. Prior to that it is ALL exposition, a parade of a veritable phonebook of characters, and numerous unnecessary tangential subplots. It took me a long time to figure out what the real focus was in this rambling, incident-filled book. It's obvious that Rickman thoroughly enjoyed creating this village and all its inhabitants but many of these characters serve no purpose whatsoever. Lots of false tension when contrived plot incidents are thrown in as obstacles before we get to the real meat of the story. And endless reiteration and redundancy - especially the moody, angst-filled musings of the ex-rock star who contemplates a la Hamlet his own suicide in four separate sections. And the first time wasn't even that interesting. This book could easily have been less than one half of its voluminous, turgid length.

Initially I was drawn to this because it was a modern crime tale that blended folklore and the supernatural. I like what Rickman is trying to do here, but there's quite a bit of digging through a bleak and murky mine before you get to even a smidgen of the vein of gold that is the real story of Merrily, Jane, Lucy and Lol. The ideas of fate vs. purpose, faith vs. doubt, the contrast of the paradoxes in organized religion and less structured pagan or naturist beliefs -- all of these themes finally come through in the last third of the book. The "crime" part of this crime novel (and there are a few) is almost thrown in as an afterthought. Really this is something akin to George Eliot meets Arthur Machen (how's that for an egghead literary allusion?) in a contemporary setting. I'll try my hand at the next book in the series in which Merrily becomes an exorcist and see if Rickman manages to lay off the tangents, minutiae and often mundane sideline incidents. I see that all of these books weigh in at over 400 pages. Somehow I don't think I'm going to make it through all of these.

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The little something extra that adds extra zing to your favorite seafood creations. Made from fresh, unsalted butter flavored with herbs and wine, tequila and lime, or wasabi and ginger. After baking or grilling, gourmet compound butter is the crowning touch that brings out an uncommonly good flavor in any seafood. Order 4-ounce tubs individually or get the sampler and try all three! butter , butter flavored , butter flavors , \n\n

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De Long's WINE TASTING NOTEBOOK is a simple, inexpensive yet elegant way to "hit the ground running" and learn about wine. It also makes a thoughtful gift for all wine lovers.
A CONCISE LEARNING TOOL IN THREE PARTS:
1. The Wine Tasting Notebook puts the repetitive parts of a note in convenient multiple choice for pros as well as acting as training wheels for beginners
2. Wine Tasting Terms helps build your wine tasting vocabulary with 216 popular terms explained in brief. Includes practical details on identifying wine faults.
3. How to Take a Wine Tasting Note walks you through the fundamentals of wine tasting. Wine is a complicated subject but the basic principles of wine tasting are not.
* Elegant black cover with gold embossing slips easily into a coat pocket or purse.
* Sewn binding lays flat for comfortable writing.
* Water resistant wine tasting guide including WINE TASTING TERMS and HOW TO TAKE A WINE NOTE stores inside back cover.

The Smart Way to Learn About Wine Tasting

Customer Review: A very handy notebook for the beginning wine lover

Twelve years ago I started drinking wine seriously, at first on the advice of a doctor, but soon just for the joy of the endeavor. Keeping good tasting notes is a great way to learn about wine very quickly. Steve De Long has put together a very handy notebook that will teach you how to do just that.

The first section consists of 60 forms to help guide you in writing notes on your first 60 wines. I've posted a copy of the form in the first Comment, and De Long urges you "PLEASE SHARE: Download more forms as well as instructions from from the [De Long's website], print out as many as you like, email to your friends or purchase De Long's Wine Tasting Notebook."

The second section shows you how to fill out the form for the wines you taste, and the third section teaches you the meanings of 216 commonly used wine tasting words and phrases. The notebook lies flat for easy use, the paper takes a great impression from either pen or pencil, the Notebook looks elegant, and it fits easily in your pocket or purse.

Steve and his wife Deborah have published the beautiful De Long's Wine Grape Varietal Table. Over the years I've written over 50,000 wine tasting notes. My experience in writing them convince me that both the Tasting Notebook and the Varietal Table are great resources for learning more about wine.

Besides, my doctor says wine is good for you!

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