It is apparently fine to drink pretty wine with ugly food. Combining **** $30 2008 Cos Cerasuolo di Vittoria with home made halibut ravioli proved that out. Just back from Alaska with sixty pounds of halibut and lingcod fillets in tow, the flavorful white fish has been figuring into meal after meal. As deliciously addictive as fish […]
Moved By Wine, Food, and People
I find myself perseverating over the intersection of wine, food, and humanity on internet-less JetBlue flight #411 from Boston to San Diego. It is not as lofty a mind game as it sounds. I’ve just been thinking about how thirty-six hours at the 2012 Wine Bloggers Conference in Portland, Oregon this weekend might play out; […]
Long Tail Wine and Troquet
A cellar clearance sale occurs every summer at Boston’s wine-oasis-restaurant Troquet. Once upon a time, years ago, Troquet proprietor Chris Campbell owned a simpler but no less compelling wine Mecca, UVA, in Brighton. You would find winos, sommeliers, and chefs ordering pizza and grilled meats to drink with Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Rhone wines selling for […]
Wine Cellar Celebration at AKA Bistro
Bordeaux improves through cellaring; nothing new about that. A long time ago I joined a group dinner to taste claret with Clive Coates and he drew something like this to explain a cultural gap in patience, along wines’ life trajectories, between British and American wine enthusiasts: At a very recent dinner I hosted for a group of business […]
California Wine Lists: Value Desert
Blanket statements can be dangerous and instigative, so let’s begin by saying something nice about California Cabernet; several offer amazing, sexy, and voluptuous drinking. Some are even global ambassadors offering classic varietal profiles and age worthiness such as Ridge Montebello, Dominus, and Dalla Valle, as examples. Still, I drink very, very little of it besides […]
Pairing 2010 Brun Fleurie Beaujolais With Oysters
Opening red wine with oysters stirs cries of insubordination similar to the ones Beijing party leaders might attach to Tiananmen political dissenters. Champagne, Muscadet, Chablis, Sauvignon Blanc, Gruner, Chenin Blanc, Picpoul and a smattering of other crispy acidic white wines make the cleared list while reds take cover in their brackish shadows. Give me oysters bathed in […]
Jean-Marc Brignot Redefines Jura Winemaking
You can sideline focusing on Jura’s Vin Jaune and Savagnin, Poulsard, and Trousseau if Jean-Marc Brignot’s Vinibrato wines move beyond their tiny production cult status stage. Think Gamay from Beaujolais, and Pinot Noir from Burgundy instead. There was a time in French history that Burgundy and Jura were joined at the hips. Only 72 miles […]
2010 Donkey and Goat Rosé vs. 1985 La Chapelle?
Just like clocks striking twelve, our cellar coughs up one bottle of 1985 wine every year on April 14. My wife and I were lucky to be married in this vintage year. The Bordeaux have aged gracefully despite the vintage’s early accessibility, northern Rhones are holding onto their fruit even now, 1985 Sassicaia made our evening […]
Chicago Wine & Ribs + Pizza & Hot Dog Sides
Like all great cities, eating and drinking in Chicago is a dual proposition. While the likes of Alinea, Moto, and Green Zebra ping away at culinary pleasure sensors, the city’s midwest soul food circuits beckon. I developed my own ritual patterns for Chicago’s simpler local eating more than twenty years ago, always making sure to […]
AN/2 & Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894 at Barcelona
The world is better off for places like Barcelona. Wines such as Anima Negra AN/2 from Majorca’s red callet grape and Bodegas Palacios Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894 from Rioja’s white viura variety don’t make it onto just any wine list. But at Barcelona Restaurant and Wine Bar, ten minutes off of I-84 in (of all places?) West Hartford’s […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- …
- 10
- Next Page »