Elin McCoy

Sitting on a hay bale in a Texas barn in the 1980s, I discovered that the best red wine to go with a cowboy stew of longhorn beef is a decent vintage of Bordeaux first growth Chateau Haut-Brion.

French winemaker Caroline Frey, in chic white jacket over a sparkly T-shirt and slim velvet pants, hardly looks like a fighter.

As summer winds down, there’s still time to think about changing your life and leaving the fast lane of finance for the slow pleasures of winemaking.

Hankering for a taste of 1979 Il Colle Brunello di Montalcino with your dry-aged steak? At New York’s Del Posto restaurant, a three-ounce pour is $169, six ounces, $338.

Collectors whining about Bordeaux prices have an excellent alternative this year: the 2011 vintage ports.

As my car climbs the steep road to Mayacamas winery on Napa’s remote Mount Veeder, I’m recalling its classic cabernets and chardonnays. Amazingly long-lived and complex, they’re under-the-radar and undervalued for their ‘first-growth’ quality. Is all that about to change?

“One hundred thousand welcomes,” Lochlann Quinn said in Gaelic as several hundred wine VIPs slipped into candle-lit tents at his Chateau de Fieuzal in the Graves region of Bordeaux.

Trade group Wines of Turkey is showing off the country’s top reds and whites at a packed tasting at VinExpo fair in Bordeaux this week while heavy-handed regulations are making it harder than ever for them to sell at home.

An Aston Martin DB9 Volante, a 20- year vertical of wines from Harlan Estates, and a tour of Coco Chanel’s apartment helped the 2013 Auction Napa Valley charity event raise a record $16.9 million.

Sweet wines used to be the most famous wines in the world. Offering them was a king’s privilege, a symbol of power. Diamond Jim Brady drank them with thick rare steaks.

Buying Bordeaux 2012 futures was always going to be a question of prices. Now that the majority of chateau owners have released theirs, it’s apparent they’re tone deaf to today’s market. Most prices are down less than 10 percent, nowhere near low enough.

Chef Daniel Boulud still remembers the unique smokiness when he took his first sip of scotch at age 12. “Not many liquors are as interesting and complex as whisky,” he says, recalling the decadent, charming countess who gave him a taste when he delivered goat cheese from his family’s farm in France.