Tips for the perfect wine tasting

A while ago I wrote about the impossibility of structured wine tastings: how the bold and more alcoholic examples overpower the subtler ones by the end.

But they're also tremendous fun, especially when you organise your own.

Not to mention a subsidised way to drink some decent wine.

Here's how to do it.

Favourite things, May 2012

• The American Ballet Theater's La Bayadère at the Lincoln Center. The red velvet-lined Metropolitan Opera House is just the place to sip a $19 flute of champagne whilst eyeing off NYC's bourgeoisie at the Grand Tier restaurant.

• Eataly. For the joy of standing in a marble hall, nibbling on Parma ham and parmiagiano with a chilled glass of rosé. For their lattes as good as those in Sydney, and divine apple tartlets. For their perfect pasta and jaw-dropping grocery aisles.

• Zainab Salbi's memoir, Between Two Worlds
• Mad Men season 5 - every episode is increasingly explosive. Season finale next week.   
• Launching a website for the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) (www.icij.org) and a new digital product, the Global Muckraker (www.icij.org/blog) 
• Watching this video of my Sydney yoga teacher Susanna cycling through my beautiful home city:
• Jouer lip enhancer - no sting, and a pretty, sheer veil of pink.
• Algenist regenerative anti-aging moisturizer - finally, an effective anti-aging product.

Favourite things, April 2012

April was a bit of a bumpy month so it's a rather slender list this time. But a few things brought moments of joy:

Stephanie, me, and Stephanie after teaching our karma yoga class to benefit Women for Women

• Co-teaching a 60-minute karma yoga class on April 29 to benefit Women for Women International
• Sara Avant Stover's Way of the Happy Woman mini-retreat on April 1 was powerfully rejuvenating and nurturing. Such a gifted teacher, and it was wonderful to finally meet her in person
• Brunch at Zaytinya: a taste of Sydney with their Lebanese/Greek/Turkish menu. Their taramasalata is possibly the best thing I have eaten on US soil
• Strawberries with Tellicherry black pepper, made into jam
• New friendship with the lovely Carol, aka Coco Yogini
• This song, which makes me want to sip summer drinks and dance beside a swimming pool:

You must remember this

As wine lovers, we all have special drops that loom large in our memory. There are the exalted bottles we've sampled - an extravagant purchase perhaps, or a lavish gift - and been blown away by. And there are the bottles we hang on to for years, anticipating the taste before finally opening.

But quite often the wines we enjoyed the most aren't the great, expensive bottles at all. Even a modest bottle of wine sometimes lives on in your memory - not because of its taste but because of the circumstances in which it was drunk.

Bottles with memories attached are more valuable than a Penfolds Grange.

Favourite things, March 2012

• It's Spring! The scent and sight of cherry blossoms. Cherry green smoothies. Cherry marzipan green tea. Open windows. Warm breeze on your bare arms.
• Fojol Bros food truck. Each Wednesday the fantastically mustachio-ed, turban-ed chaps pull up at Farragut Square in their silver van and I feast on spicy Ethiopian stews such as beets and greens or beef berbere with a soft slab of injera bread. Alongside the Red Hook Lobster truck, this is the best quick lunch in downtown DC.
• My yoga teacher trainee sangha. I can't imagine weekends without their constant companionship and stimulation. 
• Roost blog. Exquisite photography and recipes.

• One Love Skin Savior on my face. It's a super-concentrated water-free cleanser and a moisturiser, so it's at once both non-comodegenic and very hydrating. Even better, it's all-natural and good enough to eat. A discovery via Birchbox.
• Age of Aquarius by Color Club on my toes.
• The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron. Her accessible Buddhist teachings help me find serenity and clarity.
• This article about foodie-ism as youth culture in New York magazine.

• Canal House Cooking lunchtime emails. Their cookbooks are outstanding (I have numbers 2 - fall/holidays - and 6 - the grocery store) and their name so evocative of a lovely, homey kitchen with a wood stove and a tree-fringed water view, fueled by the meeting of two creative minds. But I must put in a pitch for their daily emails of what they made for lunch that day, which are a true treat. Voyeurism and inspiration in one dose.
• Monoi Tiare Tahiti (coconut oil w/ Gardenia). I am seriously craving summer, having gone from one winter into another when we moved to the northern hemisphere in September. When I smell this I am transported home to our front courtyard in Bronte, sea salt in my hair and my skin slicked with coconut oil and the scent of our gardenia hedge in the air, with a glass of rose in my hand.
• My wonderful yoga students at Whitman Walker Health. Never imagined they would reward me so much
• Yago Hortal's colour-bomb paintings for some springtime sizzle. 

What brought you moments of bliss in March? Leave your favourites in the comments below.

Is Hormone Replacement Therapy worth the risk?

Samantha Jones: poster child for bioidentical hormones in the Sex and the City 2 movie.

Menopause is a normal physical process. Yet many in the medical community believe it should be medicalised and treated with hormone supplementation to ameliorate its undesirable symptoms. Unfortunately the consequences of long-term hormone therapy (HRT) are still not well understood. Research indicates it  increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, blood clots, breast cancer and dementia, while alleviating symptoms including hot flushes, low libido, vaginal dryness and insomnia.

I have weighed up the benefits and the risks of HRT, as well as investigated the alternatives to pharmaceutical treatment for improving both the health and quality of life for women undergoing and following menopause. All of my references are included so you can read the research for yourself and make an informed decision.