Ribelle in Brookline has figured out what other Boston restaurants have not; deliver the quintessential dining experience embodying a Bostonian “sense of place”. Phraseology often finding its way into wine conversations, “sense of place” gives tasters insights and connections to region, weather, vineyard, culture, and overall terroir that begat their beverage. For restaurants, farm-to-table and […]
Choosing a Restaurant Wine List Over Food
As the eight of us maneuvered on a street corner to hail two NYC yellow cabs, my son asked me why we were traveling from 66th and Central Park West to Williamsburg, Brooklyn for dinner. “Aren’t there any nice restaurants in Manhattan?” It was a fair question. I explained I had booked a table for […]
Noma: New Normal In Perfect Dining
It is important to walk to Noma over city bridges and along waterfront streets to embrace Copenhagen’s bone chilling winter. February Noma meals are miraculously conceived outdoors; natural bounties harvested, pickled, smoked, or dried in step with a harsh Scandinavian winter calendar. Only then are they skillfully nurtured into a series of intellectually compelling courses […]
Amsterdam Wine and Food
While food and wine still do not rank as keywords for Amsterdam’s travel websites, it is time to cut the canal city some slack. Visiting Amsterdam as a young man in the 1980’s and 90’s conjured immersive travel images of great contrast to the Amsterdam we experienced this weekend. While our first day was reserved for […]
Blind Wine Tasting and Coke
During the final week of every “old” year I head to the same, sun scorched lazy Puerto Rico beach to give my peripatetic brain enough space to subconsciously prioritize and ponder only the most important issues. Blind wine tasting made the cut this year, triggered by some catch up reading of Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Blink. If […]
Pair Wine With Children Not Food
It is easy to turn your back on wine media around Thanksgiving. Hundreds of wine and food writers boldly recommend thousands of wines to pair with millions of holiday ingredient and flavor tapestries. It all looks as delusional as amusement park revelers wagering on spinning arcade lottery wheels; the odds say your instincts for picking […]
Breakfast Wine
Is there hope for wine becoming a tightly woven staple inside the fabric of all meals; consumed sans any hint of pomp and circumstance? While the prospect is mesmerizing, it feels more countercultural than any of my 1970’s teenage years ever did. Can Americans honestly aspire to adopt a European wine-as-food lifestyle? Or, is the thought […]
Wine Rock Star-Part 2
You don’t have to be a Rock Star to drink wine like one. Rock Star Winos beguile fame, demagnetize paparazzi, leave crowd-free wakes, and sign no autographs. Being a Rock Star Wino with the juice to indulge audiences in sensory, intellectual, and emotional celebration is unassuming and simple. So, if you read Wine Rock Star- […]
The Wine and Food Culture Divide
I’ll admit to spending more time than it’s probably worth thinking about nuances in wine and food culture. For example, I ponder how obvious it is that most of us Americans act with righteous self confidence buying, ordering, and cooking the foodstuffs and ingredients we prefer. We’ll ask questions freely when shopping or ordering to […]
Beaujolais Tasting Recipe: Sweet & Sour Onion Sage Bruschetta
Wine needs appropriate food to dance with with even in critically serious tasting situations. It’s one of a few life rules to steadily honor. As such, I reflexively succumb to a ceremonial tasting day duty, before each of our group’s monthly blind tasting soirees, of preparing a few things that are different and hopefully more […]