April 2009


ramey-wine-cellarsLast night, April 29,  we celebrated Wine Festival Week with a Wine Dinner featuring the wonderful, highly rated wines from Ramey Wine Cellars!  Guests enjoyed five different Chardonnays (three rated between 93 & 95 points), a “93” rated Syrah and three huge, highly rated and allocated Cabernets! Click below to hear me speak about this Wine Dinner!

David Ramey is one of my favorite winemakers and I was so glad to finally feature his wines on a wine festival eve!  A UC Davis graduate, Ramey made award winning wine at Chateau Petrus, Matanzas Creek, Chalk Hill, Dominus and Rudd before founding his own winery in 1996.  He is all about authentic hand crafted wines that are among the most respected in the world!  If you haven’t tasted these wines – you are missing out on one of life’s true pleasures!

Thanks again to David and all of our guests for joining us on this very special evening!

Grandson LucasMaggie and I are so proud to introduce you to our very first grandson, Lucas Kuehn.  He was brought to us August 24.  While I was holding little Lucas for the first time I forgot all about the recession and the many business challenges that we face every day.  Somehow new life helps put things in perspective…at least for a little while!

Lucas is a beautiful baby and we are so happy to have him in our family and as a mascot for The Carlton Restaurant!  As a true Pirates fan, Lucas is predicting the Pirates to go 500 this year!


Last Friday, April 17, Stan “the Wine Man” Lalic returned to The Carlton for another installment of  his “Best of Italy” Wine Dinner series.  Wine Dinners with Stan are always unique and memorable as he works hard to bring great small production offerings from Italy  to our table and this one was no different.

Our focus for this dinner was on Barbaresco and guests enjoyed samples from five special wines – all with ratings between 92 & 97 points!

I want to thank Stan and everyone who came out for an enjoyable and memorable evening!  I hope to see you soon at our next event!

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