by Monte Belmonte | Dec 5, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
Dear Santa, It has been one year since my last confession. I have been a fair to moderately good boy. There has only been the occasional quid pro quo. And even when wine companies have shipped me free wine, I have been unafraid to damn them with faint praise in this...
by Monte Belmonte | Nov 21, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
At age 2, my grandfather emigrated from Bonito, Italy, on the good ship Colombo and docked in Ellis Island in 1922. He became a U.S. citizen the old fashioned way — by waiting in a relatively short line, getting deloused and having his name changed from Crescenzo to...
by Monte Belmonte | Nov 7, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
I don’t know much about the real Johnny Appleseed but his mythology precedes him. I know he was born in Leominster, Mass., near the time of the American Revolution. And I know he was less interested in planting Macintosh to give to teachers as gifts as he was in...
by Monte Belmonte | Oct 18, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
Cristián Aliaga thought he wanted to be a dentist. Maybe it was the future prospect of uncovering leftover tuna fish under someone’s dental bridge that made him reconsider. But when it came time to make a decision as to what to study at university in Chile, he...
by Monte Belmonte | Oct 3, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
I have never been to wine country. At least never to any of the famous wine countries. Not Napa. Not Bordeaux. Not Piedmont. Nowhere. This is yet another one of the many reasons why it could be considered a lapse in judgment every time the Advocate prints one of my...