On top of our wine harvest, we also just picked up this weeks veggie share, and holy cow – are we talking bountiful. Romaine, peppers, tomatoes (regular, heirloom, candy-sweet Sungolds – yum!), eggplant, apples, Concord grapes, basil, raspberries, arugula, carrots, kale, chard, and fresh garbanzo beans.

While I love farmer’s markets, and still think that they are a wonderful way to get your hands on delicious, fresh, local produce, taking part in a veggie share has opened my eyes to vegetables I would have walked right past in a farmer’s market. Take fresh garbanzo bean for instance. I’m so accustomed to getting my garbanzo beans from a can, or rehydrating dried beans I had never considered the natural state of the garbanzo.

They come in these pretty shells that make the most delightful pop when you shell them, and they are absolutely delicious when given a quick blanch in pasta water and tossed with olive oil, garlic, and a bevy of fresh herbs. How is it that I have made it this far in life without knowing where a garbanzo bean comes from? I guess we are that far removed from our food in America.

Off the soapbox now, I would suggest that you get yourself to a farmer’s market pronto and take advantage of all of the beautiful produce available right now. Maybe even have a little fun with your food and try something you’ve never tried before – who knows, it might just be delicious.

For us the answer was easy, rather than sacrifice our wine to the heat we turned to Craigslist. Call it good fortune, or call it the current state of the economy causing people to liquidate their luxury goods, either way I was impressed by the sheer volume of well priced wine coolers currently available. Working with a fairly modest budget, we found a functionally perfect, cosmetically slightly imperfect wine cooler that stores about 250 bottles for $350 dollars. One heckuva deal if you ask me, and a small investment to assure that our wine stay in pristine collection.

By the way, for you collectors out there, it seems that now is a good time to troll Craigslist in search of great deals. That turn in the economy is causing some folks to clear out there wine cellars to get some extra cash. Couldn’t afford that 2000 Bordeaux on it’s release? You might be surprised at what people are asking for some great bottles right now. Woe is me that my wine budget went to purchasing a wine cellar, rather than snatching up a few killer deals. I guess since the cellar is pretty well stocked right now there wouldn’t even be room for the new bottles.

So the move is complete, the cellar installed in the garage, the glassware cleaned and put away, the kitchen up and fully functional….now, on to the rest of the house. But really, who needs pictures hung in a bedroom? As long as you can cook a great meal and find a bottle of wine to pair with it, you’re set if you ask me. Oh, and don’t forget to clear up a place to sit down and eat it. Now, you’re set!

It was fun to see how my grandma’s recipes had evolved overtime, and how the basics of her Midwestern cooking had translated into new family traditions. The one thing that was sorely missing were Grandma’s pies – oh how that woman could bake. I don’t think any of us wanted to beg the comparison of our attempts at mimicry to Grandma’s stellar baking skills. 

We all, about 40 of us, arrived at different hours over the course of the day on Friday and said our hellos. But the moment the food hit the table the hugs became closer, the stories were told and retold, and the belly laughs resonated over the Lake of the Ozarks. Funny how food does that to family. A few secret recipes never fails to bring a family together. 

My sister, the organizer, compiled a collection of all of Grandma’s recipes in a book aptly titled ‘Great Meal Mom,’ which was how my grandpa closed every meal. It’s heirlooms like this that are truly valuable, heirlooms that provide a way to reconnect with the past and help to build new memories for the future. As valuable as heirloom tomatoes seeds are to farmers, heirloom recipes are to me. Great meals, warm memories, and the love of a family. Amazing how all of that’s within a list of ingredients, isn’t it?

The laws, at the time, allowed for only traditional Italian grape varieties, required that the grapes be blended (so no 100% varietal wines, all wines were sold as regional blends), and  aging in French oak barrels was frowned upon. Several Tuscan winemakers thought that these restrictions were forcing them to make inferior quality wines, so rather than make wines they didn’t believe in and sell them with the ‘esteemed’ DOC label, they made the wines that they wanted to and sold them as Vino da Tavola, a classification usually reserved for the everyday wine sold in large quantities. These wines quickly gained notoriety, and soon became ultra-pricey, ultra-premium and highly sought after. 

The social revolution spurred the wine regulators to look at the laws in place and investigate whether traditional methods were the best, or whether it was time for reformation. It took a few decades, but finally the rules loosened to accommodate this new style of wine and elevated the Super Tuscans through the ranks of IGT, DOC, and finally DOCG. I guess social revolution really can cause governmental change.

While, yes, it is a bit of work to get ready to picnic, the genius of it is that you front load all of the work. All of your prep is complete (or, at least most of the way complete) before you even leave for your dinner destination. It’s al fresco dinning at its best – the food is simple and fresh, and clean-up is a snap. 

Tonight, I am meeting my husband for a little sunset picnic at a winery. One of those things that was incredibly romantic a year or two ago, but now days is a fun family outing (be sure to pack the Cheerios!!). On the menu for this evening – grilled salmon, shaved summer squash salad with carrots, radicchio, fennel, basil, and parsley in a lemony vinaigrette, and radishes with cheese and chives as an app while the salmon is cooking. So far the salad is assembled, dressing made, fish cleaned, and radishes cut and slathered with cheese. We have a beautiful collection of fruit, so I’m thinking I might throw some plums, and apricots in foil pouches to toss on the coals for a yummy dessert. 

As for the wine – why a rosé, of course! Fortunately, the winery that we’ll be heading to has plenty of delicious rosé (from Pinot Noir, perfect with the salmon!). That way we don’t have to be tacky, and sneak wine into a winery. I know I’ve extolled the virtues of rosé before, but you really can’t beat it for a picnic. It starts off nice and cold, but still retains good flavor as it warms up, so you don’t have to worry about the temp of the wine, it’s going to be tasty at any temperature. (Disclaimer – if it’s 90° outside, you’ll need to throw your wine on ice – reds to! No wine is tasty when hot.) Aah… summertime – delicious!

After a long day, sometimes you just want easy food. The other evening, I was beat, I was starving, it was 6:45, my husband was just getting home from work, and I hadn’t even considered what to fix for dinner. Appetizers to the rescue!

We had a bit of smoked salmon leftover from one of our favorite Jamie Oliver recipes, some horseradish cream, leftover bread – so smoked salmon crostinis seemed a natural extension. The abundance of radishes quickly taking over our veggie drawer, and a recipe that my hubby emailed me from the kitchn and dinner was rapidly taking shape.

We toasted off thin slices of yummy bread, topped them with a little smoked salmon, a dollop of horseradish cream, and a sprinkle of dill and we had one facet of our appetizer dinner. For the other half of the schizophrenic meal, I sliced radishes, spread a little Laughing Cow cheese on top (as we didn’t have any cream cheese – but work with what you’ve got I say!), and cut some garden fresh chives over the top. Naturally, a bottle of bubbly was popped to celebrate an instantaneous appetizer feast, and because it seemed like a great choice for both the salmon and the radishes.

The meal was perfect! Quick, easy, satisfying, and absolutely delicious. In fact, we loved the radishes so much that I have fixed them three out of the past four nights. Somehow, I don’t foresee us having trouble using up our radishes any longer. I love finding new favorite things!

Many of the wines coming from this area are white, but there is a good bit of red produced here as well. The foods of this area are a far cry from the red-sauce intensive menus of American Italian restaurants, so the wines are also a far cry from the bright, tart reds coming from further south. The best known exports from this neck of Italy include Prosecco, Valpolicella, Soave, and the Pinot Grigios coming from Fruili. For me these are the diamonds in the rough of the Italian wine market – the whites are bright and fruity – an unusual trait for Italian white wines, and the reds are fragrant and fruity. 

Prosecco has quickly become the recognizable name in Italian sparkling wine since Asti Spumante has fallen off the proverbial map. Popular not only as a crisp and appley bubbly in its own right, Prosecco is the key ingredient a Bellini, the cocktail made famous at Harry’s Bar in Venice. Prosecco is a wonderfully bright alternative to Champagne, and for the price of one bottle of good Champagne you can buy three or four bottles of Prosecco. Not a bad deal at all, if you ask me. 

Valpolicella is the red wine coming out of Northeastern Italy, Veneto specifically. If Orvieto is a red-wine drinkers white, then Valpolicella is a white-wine drinkers red. The tannins are almost imperceptibly soft, and the blend of Molinara, Corvina, and Rondinella produce a bright and cherry-scented, highly-quaffable red.

Also coming from Veneto and from the same trilogy of grapes (Molinara, Rondinella, and Corvina) are the wines of Amarone. The soft, sexy wines of Amarone are made from grapes that are allowed to dry out and raisinate.  The resulting wine has a texture unlike any other – smooth and velvety, and the flavors are concentrated and a little raisinated in their own right. Try Amarone with game meats, fruit sauces, soft cheeses, or as an after-dinner alternative to Port. 

Soave is and always will be my wine pairing for mussels. The blend of Trebbiano and Garganega (go ahead, say it, Garganega – fun isn’t it?) makes for a lovely companion to shellfish. Soave is a dry-white with a lemony, mineral quality. If you are going to try a bottle of Soave, I would skip over the end-cap of Bolla, and look for a bottle of Soave Classico. Believe me, the extra money you shell out comes back four-fold in flavor. 

As for the Pinot Grigio and other whites from Northeastern Italy, there is more to this region (thankfully) than Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio. I was so underwhelmed by Santa Margarita when I first had it that I discounted all Pinot Grigio for far too long. Good Pinot Grigio is fresh and clean, and a surprisingly good value. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio, which I find thin, watery, uninspired and blah.

The wines of Fruili and Alto Adige are often labeled by grape variety rather than region, as is the custom in the rest of the Northeast of Italy. Additionally, the wines of Alto Adige are often label in Italian and German, or occasionally just German. I love the wines from this area – you get the heart of an Italian winemaker with the precision of a German manufacturer – consistent, high-quality, and absolutely delicious. 

So, after my husband got home from work we needed to go through the whole process of bottling. We tasted all of the carboys of wine, to be sure that all of the wine was good prior to bottling. Then came the process of setting up a ‘bottling line,’ a big fermenter (aka giant food-grade plastic bucket), stacked on top of another fermenter so that we could get a gravity siphon going. After filling all eight cases of bottles individually, it was then time to cork them. Individually. It’s a long process, but we were much better, cleaner, faster than our last experience with bottling. 

As we started this whole process at about 6:30, we had to incorporate dinner into the middle of the bottling process. The remaining vegetables from last weeks veggie share pick-up dictated that we have a stir-fry with green beans, oyster mushrooms, and scallions. Since we were in the heat of bottling our Pinot when we stopped for our dinner break, it made sense to celebrate the occasion with a glass of Pinot Noir, and it was perfectly awful? But at the same time I wouldn’t have wanted any other wine – it was perfect, in its own weird way.

The spicy, Sriracha heavy stir-fry was not even close to the right food for our Pinot, which is highly acidic, and has bright raspberry fruit. Its our favorite stir-fry recipe and the Pinot is the best wine that we have made by far. Even though the wine was awful with the food, it was a perfect meal because of the situation. Sometimes the best match is the food that you want and the wine that you want, compatibility be damned!

While Chianti has changed significantly in both composition and reputation since those days, it is still the first Italian wine that comes to mind for most.   The vinoscape of Tuscany, while famed for Chianti, is also home to Brunello di Montalcino, Rosso di Montalcino, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Rosso di Montepulciano as well as numerous other DOC regions that are not extensively exported. It is also home to the famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) wines known as ‘Super Tuscans,’ but more on that later. 

Chianti laws have changed significantly in the last few decades, resulting in much higher quality wines. The primary grape (75-100%) of Chianti is Sangiovese with the remainder of the blend comprised of several red grapes that few outside of Italy are familiar with and possibly up to 10% white grapes (Trebbiano and Malvasia), although this tradition has fallen out of favor in recent years.Within the region of Chianti, lies the subregion of Chianti Classico, which is considered the historical heartland of the Chianti region. The blends of Chianti Classico will be basically the same, but Chianti Classico requires a minimum of 80% Sangiovese, rather than the 75% required in Chianti. 

The town of Montalcino, in Tuscany, is known for its pricey Brunello di Montalcino and slightly more affordable Rosso di Montalcino. Brunello is a clone of the Sangiovese grape, whose name translates to ‘little dark one.’ The wines are big, deep, intense reds with long-term aging potential, and some of the most expensive wines coming out of Italy. Rosso di Montalcino wines are essentially the same as Brunello di Montalcino, only not aged as long prior to release, only six months for a Rosso as opposed to the four years required for a Brunello. The result is the Rosso di Montalcinos are fresh, fruity and far simpler than their big brothers Brunello. 

Vino Nobile di Montepulciano (remember here that Montepulciano is the place name, not the grape name) is made from yet another clone of the Sangiovese grape referred to by its local name of Vino Nobile. The wines comparable to Brunello di Montalcino, but aged only two years, as opposed to the four required by the Brunello DOCG. So, basically what all of the hubbub in Montalcino and Montepulciano boils down to is this

Rosso di Montalcino – fresh, fruity Sangiovese clone. Aged only six months. Rather simple. Rather cheap

Vino Nobile di Montepulciano – more full-bodied and structured Sangiovese clone. Aged minimum two years. More complex. Still fairly affordable.

Brunello di Montalcino – most full-bodied and intense Sangiovese clone. Aged minimum four year. Very complex, long-term aging potential. Amongst Italy’s most expensive wines.

Outside of Tuscany, the wine production of Central Italy can be attributed mainly to Abruzzo and Umbria. Abruzzo is known for Trebbiano d’Abruzzo and the confusingly named Montepulciano d’Abruzzo (confusing because here Montepulciano is a grape, not a place as in Tuscany). Trebbiano d’Abruzzo is a fresh, simple white wine best served as an aperitif, or apertivo if you want to be Italian about it, or with simple fish dishes. Montepulciano d’Abruzzo is an affordable, widely available Italian red, that is still (thankfully) underrated. Look for the wines of Arboreto or Casal Thaulero. 

Though there is red wine produced there, Umbria is best known for its white wine Orvieto. I always think of Orvieto as a white for a red wine drinker as it has a mouthfeel more akin to a red wine than a white, but it has all of the fresh flavors of a white wine. It’s an outstanding accompaniment to all seafood, but I do love it with calamari.

Starting at the toe of the boot and working our way up you have Southern Italy, Central Italy, Northwestern Italy, and Northeastern Italy. Now I’m not trying to say that every province within these regions is exactly the same, I’m simply trying to break Italy into manageable chunks, draw some comparisons, and convey the differences in local food (and wine) culture. 

Southern Italy

Geographically, we are talking about the boot from about mid-shin down, and for simplicity, we’ll toss both islands of Sicily and Sardinia in here too. This region produces nearly half of the wine consumed in Italy, but most of this can be attributed to low-quality, high-quantity bulk wine. Very little of the massive wine production is fine wine, and very little of it is exported – with the Marsala of Sicily being the one notable exception.

The food and wine culture is far more Mediterranean than the rest of Italy, probably due in large part to the colonization of this area by both the Greeks and North African Muslims at different points in its history. Food and wine are ubiquitous and ever-present. None of the finest foods or the finest wines come from this region, leave that hype to others. When it comes to food and wine, it must be simple and delicious.

Central Italy

Central Italy encompasses the area from the curve of the calf on up, well, pretty much all the way up. Food and wine are serious business here, with the region accounting for about one-third of Italy’s wine exports, and all things alla fiorentina housed here. Chianti, arguably Italy’s most famous wine region, is situated in the heart of Tuscany alongside the Brunellos, Rossos and of Montalcino, Orvieto, Montepulciano D’Abruzzo. Basically, a good chunk of the Italian wine section of your local wine store comes from this region.

The food and wine culture here isn’t just big business, it’s also serious business at the dinner table. Florence is often touted as the birthplace of Italian cooking, at the dinner table of the Medici court. Here food and wine are painstakingly prepared to be their very best, and once you’ve tasted Bistecca alla Fiorentina, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, and Orvieto you’ll thank your lucky stars that the locals put so much stock in and take so much pride from their preparation. Read more about Central Italy.

Northeastern Italy

Some extraordinary, not to mention underrated, fine white wines come from this little crook of Italy, nestled between the foothills of the Alps and the Adriatic coast. This is the most technologically advanced and possibly least Italian (coincidence?) wine region in Italy.  

Most of the wines are fresh, bright, clean whites which pair beautifully with the local cuisine full of cream, risotto, potato dishes and polentas. The climate is quite cool, and the food shows a definite influence from nearby Germany and Hungary, so it is no wonder that white wine grapes would grow better (cool climate) and white wines would pair better with the food (germanic influences). Read more about Northeastern Italian wines. 

Northwestern Italy

This region is possibly the hardest to group together as one cohesive unit, because the provinces are rather divergent. The relative proximity to France, Monaco, Switzerland, and Germany change the local culture significantly. When it comes to wine – the best is in Piedmont. When it comes to food – the best is in Emilia Romagna. 

The consistent vein weaving through the local food and wine culture of this disparate region is richness. The food is laden with truffles, Parma ham, Parmesan Reggiano, cream, butter and the finest chocolate of Italy. The wine is equally rich with the Nebbiolo based wines of Barolo and Barbaresco, Dolcetto d’Alba and the creamy bubblies of Franciacorta. If you visit the Northwest of Italy, make sure to bring your walking shoes. You’ll need them to work off the rich delicacies which are too delicious not to indulge in. 

The short answer – you won’t, unless you learn a lot about Italian wines. The slightly longer answer – there are a few tricks that will help you to discern which type of label you are looking at, but without a baseline knowledge of Italian wines you won’t always be able to figure out what is in the bottle. Can you start to see why I have sort of left Italian wines as a delicious mystery?

Let’s take a look at the four different ways to name a wine, and I’ll share with you my cheats for remembering what I can about the convoluted Italian wine laws.

Place Name

Typically, if the place name is on a label it means that the wine is from a place of note, often a DOC or DOCG zone. In these instances you will find the words Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) or Denominazione di origine controllata e garantita (DOCG) on the label.

Now that you’ve figured out where the wine is from – what does that mean to you. Well, unfortunately not too much unless you learn what grapes are permissible in which regions, or unless you learn that you really like Orvieto, Valpolicella, or <insert you favorite wine region here> wines. The place name will simply tell you where the wine is from and what style it is made in. It’s up to you to do the leg work of tasting all the regions and figuring out which you like best.

In addition to the place name you may find a whole host of other terminology on the label, indicating the style of that DOC or DOCG zone. 

Classico – indicates that the wine is from the heart of that region

Secco - the wine is dry

Abbocato - a slightly sweet version

Recioto - made from semi-dry grapes, typically show concentrated, raisinated flavors

Riserva - the wine is aged longer

Superiore - higher alcohol (at least 1% higher than the norm), not an indication of superior quality

Frizzante - lightly sparkling

Spumante - sparkling

With a quick Italian lesson, you can actually learn more about the style of the wine from the DOC or DOCG name when it’s modified with these terms. There is a whole lot more Italian terminology on the labels, but little of it will tell you much about the wine, so we’ll stick with the short list for now. 

Combo Grape and Place Name

This label style give you a little more info, and is fairly easy to spot. It always comes in the format of grape name di place name. In the instance of a place name beginning with a vowel (which there seem to be an inordinate number of wine regions beginning with the letter ‘A’), the di is shortened to d’.

From these label types you learn the grape the wine is made from and the wine region of origin. So if you love Barbera, try both a Barbera d’Alba and a Barbera d’Asti and see which region you like better. 

There is one hiccup in this label type, and it is the bane of my organizational existence  - the Montepulciano wines. If you have been in an Italian wine aisle, you have no doubt seen Montepulciano on the occasional wine label, but is a grape name or a place name?

Well, the confusing answer is both!! In the case of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, the grape is Vino Nobile (a local name for Sangiovese) and the place is Montepulciano (a small town southeast of Florence). In the case of Montepulciano d’Abruzzi, the grape is Montepulciano (a spicy red grape grown throughout Italy) and the place is Abruzzi (a region on Italy’s Adriatic Coast). Confounded Italians!

Grape Names

Most of the wines labeled with only the name of the grape and the region come from the Trentino Alto-Adige and Fruili regions in the Northeast of Italy, and it’s rather easy to figure out what you are getting, as it is boldly stamped across the label. Here you find Pinot Grigio, Pinot Biano, Chardonnay and some Pinot Nero (aka Pinot Noir) labeled as such.

Proprietary Names

These are the wines that typically carry some of the heftiest price tags of the Italian wine market, and they also represent the producers that do not follow local tradition or local wine law. Often the bottles will be classified as Indicazione geographica tipica (IGT) wines, and often the wines will be labeled as Super Tuscans (read more about Super Tuscans here). The proprietary names include Ornellaia, Sassacaia, Tignanello, Luce, Serena, and Summus. 

These producers have carved out a name for themselves and feel that their proprietary name is all the marketing collateral they need. Proprietary wines are typically more ‘new world’ in style, meaning that they are very fruity, often tannic, and often pleasing to the American wine-drinker. Regularly the wines are made with non-traditional grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Sauvignon Blanc. Occasionally these wines will be blended with more traditionally Italian grape varieties, like Sangiovese. 

This covers the basics of Italian wine laws and labeling, but we have yet to really address any of the wines of Italy. Perhaps the convoluted nature of Italian wine is why I prefer to drink it rather than study it. 

Read more about Italy’s wine regions in part 3.

First off, it’s no wonder that Italian wine laws are loosely correlated throughout the country – Italy was a bunch of warring provinces until 1861, national wine laws didn’t come about until 1963, and only about 10% of the wine produced in Italy ever makes it out of Italy. As with many things Italian, local tradition is more important than national regulation. As Italy begrudgingly enters the 21st century, producers are refining Italian wine laws, tweaking them to better represent the local vinoscape. The good news is that the wine labels are gradually becoming more consistent and easier to understand. The bad news is that as I type this, the information is becoming obsolete, as new regulations come to pass. 

With the wine laws that have been passed in 1963 and extensively refined in 1980, here is a rough breakdown of Italian wine classification. The wines fall into a four-tier quality scale as follows:

Vino da tavola – Table wine.

The label will only indicate the color (rosso or bianco) and the producer. Prior to 1996, some of the most sought after wines of Italy were labeled as Vino da tavola because the local wine laws were not compatible with the wines being made. More recently though, little vino da tavola is exported, as most of it is local, everyday, bulk wine.

Indicazione geographica tipica (IGT) – Indicative of the growing area

This is a broad sweeping classification that includes many fine wine producers that do not feel that the restrictions of the higher classifications suit the wines that they wish to make. The classification of IGT does not indicate inferior quality to DOC or DOCG wines (the two highest classifications of Italian wines, see below), but more a producer’s desire not to conform to wine laws.

Do not assume that these wines will be cheaper than ‘higher’ classified wines, because some of the priciest wines in Italy are IGT. But at the same time some reasonably priced, everyday-drinking wines are sold as IGT. Like I said, Italian wine is a bit flummoxing. 

For IGT to appear on a label, the wine must come from an officially sanctioned wine growing area, but cannot claim origination in any of the zones or villages within the wine region. 

Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) – Denomination of Origin

Wines labeled as DOC are made from approved grape varieties, produced within specific geographic regions. There are around 250 DOC zones in Italy, and Denominazione di origine controllata will appear on the label below the name of the zone. The specific regulations of the DOC zone are variable, some control length of aging, some control vinification method, but all regulate the permitted grape types, maximum allowable yield, and total production. 

Denominazione di origine controllata e garantita (DOCG) - Guaranteed Denomination of Origin 

This is the highest distinction available within Italian wine, but it doesn’t necessarily represent the highest priced wines, as is often the case. However it is the easiest to visually identify, as an official, numbered tag is placed on top of the capsule (green for white wines, purple for reds), either over the top of the bottle, or around the neck.

DOCG wines are the most stringently regulated within the Italian wine market, and the most representative of the finest wines historically made in that region with traditional grapes. There are around 35 DOCG regions throughout Italy. 

Though not the most expensive wines, DOCG wines can be thought of as the most traditional wines. The price scale of DOCG wines is probably the most expansive of any country’s highest classification ranging from the ten dollar range up into the several hundred dollar range. 

Sadly, this is only the very tip of the iceberg that is Italian wine law. I think this will have to continue tomorrow with more discussion of regions and quality indicators. While Italian wine is delicious with food, its regulation is awfully hard to swallow!

Read more about Italian wines in part 2….

I figure it is a good habit to get into now that I’m a parent, because I don’t remember my mom cooking up MSG laden ramen whenever my dad was out of town or had to work late. Parents do things like make a well-balanced, nutritious meal every night of the week. I should figure out all of these good parent habits now before my little girl is old enough to realize that mommy would normally just indulge her bizarre food cravings (American cheese, pickles, a few slices of salami, and a half-pint of ice cream) when daddy works late.

Last night I made myself a grown-up meal of lamb chops, lemon orzo salad, and summer squash hash. Granted, it was a little bit of a cheat because the orzo salad was leftover, so all I really had to do was grill a couple of lamb chops and sauté some grated summer squash in olive oil with garlic. But, as a new mom, I think I’m entitled to take a shortcut to get dinner on the table. Especially when I’m cooking with only one hand since my wee one is a burgeoning gourmand, and loves to watch me cook. 

Dinner was so quick and easy to get on the table, I wondered why lamb chops aren’t on the menus of more busy American families. I know, I know, picturing a big-eyed, wobbly-legged lamb on your dinner table can be hard to swallow (pun shamelessly intended), but lamb packs so much flavor into those quick cooking little chops. With fifteen minutes of total cooking time I had a delicious meal to rival many a restaurant menu. Nothing more than salt, pepper, garlic powder and a smoking hot grill pan, pour a glass of Pinot Noir rosé, and dinner is served. So very quick, so very easy, so very tasty. 

As our veggie share pick-up is on Wednesday, Tuesday night dinners are almost always dictated by the veggies that we have on hand. Last night, I needed to use onions, squash, and mizuna, so roasted chicken breast with summer squash hash and wilted mizuna salad was on the menu. As for wine pairing – time to break out a summer-time favorite, a Pinot Gris (aka Pinot Grigio if it is coming from Italy), light, fruity and fresh, and perfect with all our veggies.

Since joining a veggie share, I am reminded of my mom’s stories of summer when she was growing up in the midwest. My grandmother was forced to cook seasonally, because seasonal veggies were all that you could get. My mom fondly recalls having fresh corn on the cob, tomatoes, green beans for every meal, lunch and dinner, until they were no longer in season. There was an anticipation each vegetables commencement, then you would stuff yourself silly with it, and by the time you were growing tired of that veggie, it’s season would conclude.

Personally, I think this is a heck of a lot better way to eat, rather than having veggies transported from the far reaches of the globe just so you can have a tomato (that doesn’t actually taste like a tomato, I might add) in the middle of winter. I know I’m not the first to stand on this soapbox (and hopefully not the last), but food just tastes better when you eat seasonally an locally.

Yeah, it can be daunting to come up with yet another recipe to use radishes when you are up to your eyeballs in every variety of radish known to man, but at the same time you step outside your proverbially recipe box, and try recipes you would have overlooked.

As if delicious food, trying new recipes, and vegetables that actually taste like vegetables weren’t enough of a reason to eat seasonally, taking part in a veggie share has made both of us much healthier. In yearly check-ups my husband’s cholesterol went from pushing 240 to just over 100, and the only major change we’ve made is diet. I’ll take a salad, green beans and curried cauliflower over Lipitor any day!

I guess that is the danger of collecting a consumable. Regardless of how you set up your wine cellar, or wine rack, once you drink some of the bottles, the whole system changes. With my obsession with organization (and yes, I’ll admit it, alphabetizing – I love to alphabetize!) it is surprisingly easy for me to deal with the chaos of a wine rack.

It could be a carryover from my days as a wine director for a restaurant, but when you get a good basic system in place, it’s easy to keep some sense of order in your wine collections. First off, you need to have a place for your untouchables – those bottles that you are laying down, or just saving for your next special occasion.

This is often the hardest for new wine collectors, especially for couples where both parties aren’t equally invested in the wine cellar. For some, this needs to be completely removed from the ‘everyday wine’ storage, the out of sight out of mind theory of wine collecting. It could be a closet, a crawl space under the house, a wine fridge, but if you can’t resist the siren song of your collectors bottles than get them out of sight! For others, the collector wine can be a specific shelf, a corner, or a row of your wine rack. Having a definite home for bottles that you don’t want to drink right now makes it easier to find wine for your everyday meals, because you know where your hands-off section is. 

Second, just breaking down the wines into bubbly, white, rosé, and red is hugely helpful. It’s a piece of cake to find the bottle that you want for dinner if you know where to look. Basically, it’s the same theory as a wine shop, why rifle through all of your Cabernets when you really want a Chard?

Finally, resign yourself to reorganizing your cellar periodically. It’s the nature of the beast unfortunately. As you consume bits and pieces of your collection, your storage needs will inevitably change. Plus, it gives you a chance to look at all of your wines, reevaluate how they’re organized, and check to see what should be moved from the ‘untouchable’ shelf to the ‘drink me now’ spot. This walk down memory lane with your wine collection will put you in the perfect frame of mind to pop open something festive and enjoy a good bottle.

There is something immensely satisfying about a well stocked coffer – both in the kitchen, and in the cellar. I know that I am ready for company at a moments notice. Ready to celebrate, toast, feed, and enjoy our guests, planned or unplanned. Granted, being tucked away in our little mountain bungalow we don’t see too much in the way of unplanned company, but it’s not uncommon for a dinner guest to turn into an overnight guest and I take great pleasure in being able to feed them well and share the joy and satisfaction that food brings. 

As I write this, I wonder if I really needed to share my thoughts on a well stocked cellar and pantry, or if perhaps, this blog post is serving as a procrastination tool. Rather than take advantage of this nap-time as a chance to go sort, organize, and stock the cellar with the weekend’s shopping trip, I’m sitting in front of the computer, waxing on poetically (okay, so the poetry is up for debate) about the boy scout credo ‘Alway be prepared’ and how it applies to my wine cellar and pantry. I think there may just be something to that – perhaps it in time to shuffle bottles around and get a good organization system in place. Or perhaps it’s time to make a warm cup of coffee, check my email, and do a bit of surfing on the web. I think that option may win out after a hectic week. 

So today I guess you could say I have been strategizing, because regardless of the size of your cellar – to have a well stocked cellar you need to buy to your tastes, make sure your selection of everyday drinking wine is seasonally appropriate, and always think about long-term aging.

I have checked over the cellar to take stock of what is there, because I knew that we needed more white wines, but really had no idea where the holes were in my red selection. As it turns out I have an inordinate amount of Syrah and Petit Syrah, which is really odd because they are definitely not my favorite varietals.

I also have a dreadfully small selection of Pinot Noirs. I think I might see where this overabundance of Syrah and lack of PInot may have stemmed from – all of the tasty Pinots have been consumed while the Syrahs sit and gather dust. That is what I get for not taking my own advice and buying to my tastes. While I typically like to have at least a couple of bottles of Syrah and Petit Syrah on hand for pairing purposes, I seem to have gone a little overboard, and bought more than we’re drinking. Note to self – cook more meals that will pair nicely with big reds, so I can put a dent in the three and a half cases I have gradually accumulated. 

Anyway, back to my strategizing, to buy seasonally I definitely should stay away from the big reds – as the hot weather will eventually come to the Bay Area (well that and the fact that I have been compulsively buying big red wines, but not drinking them) and gear more towards the lighter reds. I’m thinking some Pinot for sure, and Beaujolais, if they have it, Barbera, and perhaps some domestic Gamay – all of which are light enough for summer fare and delicious with a light chill. 

Perhaps most importantly for the buying seasonally rule is to buy more  whites and rosés! I finally got around to buying some rosés a few weeks ago, but in my excitement to have rosé to pair with our summer menu it seems we have gone through the few bottles that I purchased. As for the whites – I think it is important to have a broad range of white wines ready in your summer time cellar. Notably Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, Chenin Blanc, Riesling, and Gewürztraminer should all be on hand in a summer foodie’s wine cellar. 

My shopping list

Sparkling wine (because there is never an occasion where bubbly is inappropriate)
Sauvignon Blanc (hopefully a little New Zealand, some CA, and a little French too!)
Viognier
Chenin Blanc
Riesling (I love the German stuff, but rarely want to spend the $$ for it, so I look to Australia for value)
Gewürztraminer
Chardonnay – but only bone dry, the oaky Chards are really not good with food
Sparkling (because you can never, and I do mean never, have too much bubbly)
Pinot Noir
Other light bodied reds suitable for summer fare

With today’s prep I think I’m ready to go. I would hate to end up buying even more Syrah – although, if I find some bottles suitable for aging….. nah, I think I need to steer clear of the Syrah until we drink some of what we have on hand. I will however keep an eye out for bargains on bottles to lay down for a while, because I love aged wine, and I hate paying too much for it. I’m so excited for tomorrow’s Mission: Wine Procurement, that I may not be able to sleep tonight. Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s gonna be great!

Well, there is still sparkling wine coming from the Asti region of Italy, but these days you will predominateyl find Asti and Moscato d’Asti. The term ’spumante’ means foaming in Italian, and refers to wines that are fully sparkling, rather than the ‘frizzante’ wines, which are only lightly carbonated. Wines labeled simply ‘Asti’ are today’s equivalent of the Asti Spumante that you used to see on the shelves, fully carbonated sparkling wines made from the Moscato grape. The wines labeled as ‘Moscato d’Asti’ are lightly sparkling wines, or frizzante, and are also made from the Moscato grape. Moscato d’Asti wines tend to be lower in alcohol and slightly sweeter than Asti.

As of 1995 the sparkling, or spumante, wines of Asti were elevated to the highest quality ranking of Italian wines, the DOCG. Once the wines received this acclaim, many producers dropped the term spumante from the label, because of the long standing associations with inexpensive sparkling wine (i.e. Martini & Rossi Asti Spumante). These days you rarely see a wine labeled Asti Spumante, however there has recently been an increase in wines simply labeled as Spumante. 

Taking advantage of the hole in the market left by the winemakers of Asti when they dropped their Spumante, many producers are making ‘Spumante’ wines that they are simply labeling as Spumante. Usually these white wines are anywhere from lightly to fully sparkling, fairly low in alcohol (8-11%), and not necessarily of the highest quality. While fine for a toast at a large party, the sparkling sweet wines labeled Spumante aren’t the sort of wines you need to contemplate. Simple and straightforward, Spumante is one sparkler that doesn’t deliver. For my money, there are many more bubblies out there that are comparably priced, but much more bang for the proverbial buck!

In days of my first restaurant job, a Boulder landmark that was open for just about every single holiday, where you had to work every single holiday shift, my mom and I started a family tradition. As I got to my parents house around 11 on Christmas Eve, a bit too late for a holiday meal, my mom would pick up a delicious assortment of cheeses, charcuterie, olives, fruits and peppers and I would bring home a bottle of wine for us to share.

Even after I moved on to other jobs we continued this tradition in part because it was so tasty, but also because with this type of meal you sit and talk, nosh and sip for hours. It’s less of a meal and more of a conversation with food. It also doesn’t hurt that there is virtually no prep and very little clean-up.

I’m carrying on this newfound tradition with my new family as well. My husband and I enjoy antipasto suppers, aka ‘Christmas Eve Dinner,’ at least once a month. I’ve also extended the tradition to my extended family – my in-laws thought it was a great no-muss, no-fuss prelude to Christmas.

Over the years I have tried just about every wine to accompany Christmas Eve Dinner – Pinot to Cab, Sauv Blanc to Sauternes. Every wine is always wonderful with at least one of the cheeses, but quite often it’s also dreadful with another. I went through a phase when I tried to select only cheeses that would pair with the wine. This worked fairly well, except there was always one cheese that I really wanted but couldn’t get because of the wine. Then I went in search of a wine that would more often than not be good with a vast array of cheeses.

I found it in bubbly! I know, I know, as much as I sing the praises of bubbly it should cure cancer and bring about world peace, but as far as food wines go, you can’t beat a good sparkling wine. It has enough acidity to stand up to the richness of cheese, but that’s not what makes it really special. Bubbly has the ability to complement both a tart goat cheese and creamy brie, a sharp cheddar and a stinky bleu. While I won’t try to claim that it is the perfect wine for every cheese it certainly isn’t bad with any. Ahh bubbly….is there anything you can’t do?

Sangria is a summertime wine-based cocktail, native to Spain and Portugal. It is refreshing, lightly alcoholic, and deceptively easy to drink. The variations are endless depending on what type of wine you start with, what fruits you and and whether or not you want carbonation (believe it or not, I, the queen of bubbly drinks, prefer my sangria still).

The basic recipe is pretty simple, essentially nothing more than a ratio. Play around with it, try different fruit/wine combos until you find one you like best. As for the extra kick of brandy – feel free to use up that flavored brandy that you bought for one cocktail recipe and you have stuck in the back of your liquor cabinet. Once you try good homemade sangria you will definitely want to serve it at your next patio party, or just make up a batch tonight and have a little fiesta en su casa.

Basic Sangria Recipe

1 bottle of wine
2 cups fruit, sliced or chopped
1-2 T sweetener, I prefer honey, but lemonade concentrate also works really well
1 shot brandy, triple sec, or other spirit
2 cups sparkling water, club soda, or ginger ale (optional)
Lots of ice

Combine wine, fruit, sweetener, and liquor or liqueur in a large pitcher and stir well. Allow the wine to sit in the fridge for at least six hours, but overnight or longer is better. 

Just before serving, add ice and the bubbly beverage of choice, put some festive music on, set your patio table with olives, or an antipasto platter, pop up your patio umbrella, sit back and enjoy.

Some suggested combos?
Sauv Blanc and citrus
Sauv Blanc and kiwi
Riesling with apricots and oranges
Pinot Noir with raspberries (crushed up a little) and sliced strawberries
Viognier with white peaches and nectarines (especially tasty with peach brandy)
Merlot with plums and cherries
Zin with blackberries and raspberries (both muddled a touch)

Have fun with it and send me your best combos!

Basic rules – whoever selects the bottle, then opens it in the kitchen, pours two glasses and then leaves the bottle in the kitchen. The guesser then has to ascertain as much as he or she can about the wine using only color, aroma and flavor – although my husband does ‘cheat’ a little and uses social cues like whether I decanted the wine, what I served with the meal last time, or what temperature the wine is (i.e. whether it came from our cellar or not). 

The more we play this the better each of us are becoming. For instance, the other night my husband called out an older vintage Santa Cruz Mountain red, pretty impressive if you ask me. I think the improvement stems from a refinement in our deduction skills and ‘wine logic’ rather than an improvement in our palates. As we both force ourselves to think about what we are tasting the process of thinking about wine becomes easier and more natural.  

Again and again I am amazed at the depth and breadth of wine information. Any little practice I can get in the habit of (especially practices which involve sipping tasty wine!) hones my knowledge and, with time, increases my enjoyment of wine. The first few times you try this you may get no further than red or white as your guess, but with each subsequent round of ‘Guess that Bottle’ you will get better and better – after all this is the same basic technique used by most of the candidates taking the Sommelier certification tests. Fun, educational, and it involves wine – does it get any better?

Last night I whipped up a little salad to accompany the pizza that my husband was bringing home for dinner – aah, pizza night – a welcome respite from kitchen duties, and tasty too! Working with what we had on hand I pulled out some strawberries, some sort of beautiful, curly, red-leafed lettuce, now for the dressing. I immediately thought of the classic Italian combo of strawberries and balsamic and proceeded to make a little vinaigrette (drizzle olive oil over the greens, toss, drizzle balsamic over the greens, toss – come on it’s pizza night – let’s not get too fussy). I riffled through the fridge and rustled up some goat cheese. Perhaps not the best salad to accompany pizza, but a darn tasty one none the less. 

 Now on to the wine. What do we have that will complement both pizza, and my tasty salad? I looked over the Italian wines we have, but nothing ticked my fancy. Something French? Nah, although thinking of the expression of a Frenchman when told I was drinking their fine wine with American-Italian food did make me chuckle. What to drink? What to drink?

My eyes drifted towards the remains of a case of a 2000 California Cab Sauv that I got a great price on, and I stopped looking. The older Cabernet would be nice with the pizza, as most reds are, and would be mellow enough not to blow away the salad. 

It was delicious! The softer fruit flavors of an older Cab were delicious with the fruity sweetness of the balsamic, and really pretty against the fresh, bright strawberry flavor. Even if the two parts of the meal didn’t necessarily go together too well, at least the wine was great with both of them – so in the end it all made sense. I do love that a good pairing can bring sanity to a schizophrenic meal!

When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God.

While there is an anti-communist undertone there that may not be applicable to wine, the basic tenets certainly hold true to not only the food that Steinbeck mentions, but also to wine.

It used to be that any wine from a specific region would have a definable quality, something unique to that part of the world. The French call it terroir, that certain oh, je ne c’est quoi that comes from the land, and gives the fruit coming off of it a flavor unique to that land. It’s not limited to grapes either – coming from Colorado you always knew to wait for the Rocky Ford melons, Palisade peaches and Olathe sweet corn because they were so much better than the rest.

It seems that the ’sense of place’ is becoming increasing less important in food and wine, and as a result it gets easier and easier to pass off mass-marketed wine as a quality product, rather than soulless, sterile big bottle business. I can certainly understand the appeal of the mass market wine for the producer. As long as you can make something consistent and drinkable, you’ll have an easily marketable product that will move off the shelf no matter where the shelf happens to be. Smart business, but it seems that there should be more to great wine than business.

There’s a bit of me that longs for the days of the craftsman. A time when skill and thought were required to produce a product rather than the push of a button. A time when local cheeses tasted differently because the greens that the animal grazed on were unique to that area. A time when food and wines were something special, and the greatest ones were worth seeking out. Mass production is reaching nearly every product, and because of this it is nearly impossible to find special and unique food and wine anymore. I guess that is the price of globalization. I just have to wonder if it is worth it.

Of course, any thought about dinner and a movie gets the old hamster wheel turning and I inevitably come up with one or two more thoughts on the subject. If you are watching a Cheech and Chong flick, and choose to keep your mind-altering substances legal – there’s always Absinthe! It’s green, it’s reputed to get you quite high, and it is, as of recently, legal.  

Another thought – Hoosiers with Hangtime Syrah, come on… basketball, hang time? It’s delightfully cheesy and more than a bit contrived. 

I can’t believe I missed this one the first time around – Silence of the Lambs with a nice Chianti ffptf..ffpth..ftphf..fftthpht. Perhaps some fava beans too, if you are willing to go that far, or if you, like me, can’t get enough fava beans. 

This will likely become an ongoing series, and I’d love to hear your suggestions. After all, who doesn’t love a good, cheap date night?

You’ve got your cellar stocked with bubbly, now what to eat? Pretty much anything! The only thing I have found that I didn’t love with sparkling wine was a green peppercorn sauce, and heck, even that wasn’t bad. Sparkling wine works well with cheeses, other dairy, spicy foods, seafood, shellfish, meat, vegetables, and old shoes. Okay, maybe I’m kidding about the old shoe, but I wouldn’t put it past the superpowers of a good bubbly. What is it about those intoxicating little bubbles (pun shamelessly intended) that makes sparkling wine so fantastic with food? Three things – acid, texture, and balance. 

Acid. Not only do you have the natural acidity of the wine, but also the carbonic acid from the bubbles. Typically, the grapes harvested for sparkling wine are picked with a higher acid to sugar ratio than most other wine grapes, because you want the wine to be fairly low alcohol to make the secondary fermentation (the one that makes those glorious bubbles) easier to start.  So, you have a good bit of acidity to start with and then you add even more acidity when you put the bubbles in, now that’s what I call crisp. Acidity in wine makes your mouth water, and it cuts through rich, creamy sauces, prepping you to get the most from your next bite.

Texture. We all know the feeling of the bubbles dancing across your tongue, whether it be from your last glass of sparkling wine or your last glass of soda. The texture the bubbles create in your mouth is unlike anything that you are eating, and it provides an interesting counterbalance to the texture of the food. It also seems to me that all those bubbles wake up a sleepy palate and get you primed and ready to taste.

Balance. The key factor in any good food wine is balance. You don’t want the wine to swing too far in any one direction or it will overwhelm the food. Sparkling wines are made in a clean style, so that there is not too much of any one flavor, most notably oak. The also have the distinct honor of being a relatively low alcohol wine in these days of monster 17% alcohol wines, also a big plus in the food pairing department because the high alcohol wines numb your palate prior to numbing your senses. 

Since bubbly is such a celebrated beverage, as well as an awesome food wine, I think it is a delightful hostess gift any time you find yourself invited to a friend’s for dinner. Regardless of the menu, bubbly will be great with the food and it gives the evening a very festive tone.  Bubbly, it’s a food lovers best friend.

So, here is where you come in, dear reader, what are your wine questions? What perplexes you about wine? What labels do you want to know about? What regions do you want to know about? What recipes are you still trying to find the perfect wine for? It’s shameless, I know, soliciting you for ideas, but to be topical and relevant for you, who better to do market research with than you?

Email me your questions (mollie@sipquips.com), or drop them in a comment below. There are no stupid questions, so ask whatever you wish. I promise to answer all questions, either via email or in the blog. Whether you’re a wine novice or a cork dork there’s bound to be something you want to know, so ask away!

The word aperitif comes from the Latin aperire, meaning to open. The role of these drinks to open the meal, and set the stage for what’s to come. If that’s the case, you want to offer a drink that will heighten the dining experience rather than dull the senses. To get the most bang for your flavor buck, while still keeping a clear head you probably want to offer something with a relatively low level of alcohol, probably under 25% or so. Looks like the big four heavy-hitters – vodka, gin, whisky, and tequila, are probably out of the running for Aperitif of the Year.  By that same logic, a Long Island is likely not your best bet for a pre-dinner cocktail.

Good candidates for an aperitif? You not only want something low alcohol, but definitely not sweet, and perhaps a little bitter. Why? Because the acidity or bitter flavors will cause your mouth to water and get all those digestive enzymes flowing. Delicious options include a glass of bubbly or dry white wine, Campari, Vermouth, Lillet, Dubonnet, Pastis, and Pernod. As you’ll notice several of these are either wine, or fortified wine liqueurs. The wine base gives them a nice acidic backbone, then the producers add closely guarded herbal concoctions making them much more savory, and occasionally bitter, than your average glass of wine. 

At your next dinner party think about offering a little aperitif with some olives or cheeses as your guests arrive. One sip and they will automatically shut off from their day and slide into a comfortable evening. 

My first experience with grappa was at a celebratory dinner at Aureole, in Las Vegas, after passing my sommelier test. I was in Vegas with two of my friends and coworkers who were also there for the somm test, and since all three of us passed we decided to go out for a fabulous meal. We opted for the seven course celebration tasting menu, paired with wines naturally. After enjoying an absolutely perfect meal, one of my friends opted to order a grappa as a digestif.

Curious, I asked him what it tasted like to which he responded, ‘It’s like perfect grapes and gasoline, but in a good way.’ Naturally, after a description like that, I had to try it. To this day, I cannot think of a more succinct way to describe grappa than, ’It’s like perfect grapes and gasoline, but in a good way.’ Being a distilled spirit it has a burn similar to brandy, but the amount of fresh grape flavor that you get from the stems, et al, is remarkable.

Most grappa is clear, and fairly harsh (think moonshine, but with a distinct grape taste), although soma producers will age the grappa in oak casks, giving it a yellowish to amber color and mellower flavor (think bourbon). If you are interested in trying grappa I would strongly recommend paying restaurant prices and order it after a nice meal sometime, rather than going out and buying a bottle. It is a bit of an acquired taste, and you’d hate to be stuck finishing the whole bottle if you cannot find the ‘good way’ it tastes like gasoline and grapes. If you do decide to try it – lift a glass to grapes and gasoline, cin cin! 

First off, do you enjoy older wines? Not everyone does, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with you if you do not like aged wines, but it is a good thing to know before you start buying cases of wines to lay down for decades. Here are a few questions to help you figure out if you enjoy older or younger wines better.

In red wine I prefer

a) Fresh, bright fruit flavors
b) Earthy flavors

The wines I like best are often described as 

a) Jammy
b) Supple

My friends describe me as

a) The life of the party, or larger than life
b) Reserved and thoughtful

I enjoy wines that are 

a) Tannic and/or slightly astringent
b) Soft

If you answered with mostly a’s chances are you prefer your wines young and fruity, so stop reading this silly article, go throw a steak on the grill, pop a bottle of Zin, and drink your red wines within two to four years of vintage date. If you answered with mostly b’s, think about shopping for older bottles, finding a good storage space in your house, and laying some bottles down now for the future. On average, bottles in your cellar should be consumed between 7-10 years from vintage date.

So, you’ve decided that you need to start building up a wine cellar, it’s time to go shopping right? Nope, not yet. Before you start spending any amount of money on wines that you want to lay down for any number of years you need to think about where and how you are going to store them. The most important factor of storing wine is temperature.  You’ll want to find a spot that is fairly consistent in temperature, and ideally between 55-70° F. Good options – subterranean basements or crawl spaces, interior closets, or small, self-contained wine fridges (you can find models that hold as few as 8 bottles, or as many as 1500). Bad options – on top of your refrigerator, in your laundry room, next to your water heater. The longer you plan on storing wine in this location, the more consistent you want the temperature to be.  

Two other enemies of wine storage humidity and light. You want the humidity to stay fairly consistent, and between 55-85% – too dry and your corks will dry out, too moist and they will mold. Also remember – dark cellars are happy cellars. Light exposure will eventually cook your wines, and you’ll end up with overly carmely, flat wines that are more reminiscent of bourbon than a lovely, aged, red wine.

Now that you’ve found a cool, dark space to store your wines, let’s look at getting that cellar stocked. So, what do you look for in a bottle for your cellar. For me, I think about it in terms of wines that aren’t quite done yet. These wines have some characteristic that is at present time a little green.  

Big, brassy, bold reds you want good fruit flavors, but some tannins to really dry out your mouth.

Soft, supple reds look for nice fresh fruits and floral characteristics, but some mouth-puckering acidity.

Pink wine – don’t cellar at all, open it before the end of summer.

White wine – well, that gets complicated; it’s probably best to start with some reds and then move into whites a bit later.

Bubbles – don’t hold on to bubbly for longer than two years, otherwise you get sparkling wine that’s not so sparkly, and that’s never good!

Now that you have a few bottles in your cellar, go find some yummy, everyday drinking wine to tide you over until the bottles in your cellar are ready to drink.

First off – the grapes. This part is easy. For red wines the grape is Pinot Noir. For white wines the major grape is Chardonnay. While you will not find this info anywhere on the label, it is true across the board.

Next, look for the largest print on the labels. This will be the region of Burgundy where the grapes were grown, and it’s easiest to think of it like a large target. The more specific the growing region, the closer to the center of the bulls-eye you get. The wines increase in both character and price tag the closer to the bulls-eye you buy.

At the most basic the wines will be labeled as Bourgogne, and the grapes may be grown anywhere within Burgundy. The whites tend to be leaner and more acidic Chardonnays, great with food, but not necessarily suitable for sipping on their own. The reds tend to be lighter bodied with a nice fruit-acid balance. 

Next ring of the target brings you to wines that are labeled regionally. The four major regions of Burgundy, listed from north to south, are:

Chablis – very cool, only white wines. Chablis =crisp, dry Chard with appley flavors & ample acidity

Côtes D’Or – central Burgundy, most wines come from this region. Divided into two sub-regions

Côtes du Nuits – This is where the best (read most expensive) Pinot Noir is grown. Complex & age-worthy wines.

Côte de Beaune – Structured, age-worthy white wines. Some reds as well, but softer than Côtes du Nuits Pinots.

Côte Chalonnaise – Both red and white wines. Less complex and considerably less coin than Côtes D’Or.

Mâconnaise – mostly white wines. Some excellent value can be found here.

As we zoom in the bull-eye to the Village wines, things quickly get a lot more detailed. I often have to look at a map to keep some of villages straight, especially the villages of which I’m not a big fan. In Chablis, it’s easy; they don’t have village designations. For the rest of Burgundy, if you aren’t enough of a Pinot-phile to memorize village names, you’re best bet is to check a map. Looking at the label of a village wine, you’ll typically see the large-font village name, Chambolle-Musigny for instance, and then directly under it you’ll find the words Appellation (insert village name here) Contrôlée, Appellation Chambolle-Musigny Contrôlée in this case. Other indicators it’s a village wine – you won’t see the words Bourgogne, Premier Cru (aka 1er Cru) or Grand Cru anywhere on the label.

As we step further in the bulls-eye we get to the Cru wines. Cru is a French term meaning roughly ‘growth place.’ In Burgundy, it indicates a specific vineyard where the grapes are grown, and that grapes from that vineyard are significantly better than the rest of the grapes. 

Premier Cru is possibly the easiest label designation to figure out in Burgundy because it will always say premier cru, or 1er cru, somewhere on the label, and it will often include the village designation as well. While premier cru wines can be astonishingly expensive, some decent values can be found in the premier crus of Mercurey, a village in the Côte Chalonnaise, as well as Montagny, another premier cru within the  Côte Chalonnaise.

Like Premier Cru, Grand Cru should be prominently displayed on the label. Occasionally, some producers will put it in small print – I can only assume so as not to be perceived as boastful, which may be considered tacky. Of course these same producers continue to collect top dollar, or euro, for their wines, using the Grand Cru name for all its worth.

Grand Cru Burgundies, the bulls-eye, are unfortunately out of the reach of most of us common folk. If you have the good fortune to enjoy a Grand Cru, it is like drinking bottled poetry. They are well worth the hefty price tag, but unfortunately always over too soon!

I guess this really wasn’t terribly quick, but it certainly was as dirty as promised. All this talk of Burgundy has me ready to head to the cellar and see if I can scrounge up a Burgundy for dinner. I’m sure I can come up with a reason to celebrate today and pop open a pretty little village wine – why I got a new blender today. What other reason do you need?

One possibility is to use it for cooking. As they say ‘don’t cook with something you wouldn’t drink,’ and isn’t drinking the wine the reason you’re left with a partial bottle. I typically reserve this application for bottles that are still quite fresh, typically two to three days on the counter or a week in the fridge. You can use the wine as poaching, or braising liquid, in place of vinegar in a vinaigrette, to brighten a dull sauce, or even in desserts. I posted a few interesting recipes for small quantities of wine.

If faced with lots of open bottles after hosting a party, pour the leftover wine into ice cube trays. Then, the next time a recipe calls for wine, pop a wine cube straight from the freezer into your sauce and you’re set. Another option for massive quantities of leftover wine is to mix it all together with sliced fruit and some fruit juice, make a big batch of sangria, and throw another party, but that’s another blog post.

Once a bottle has been around too long, and started to oxidize, it is no longer good for cooking. Cooking will concentrate all of the flavors, including any bad, or off, flavors.  If the wine starts to turn, I say go with it. Let it turn.

Online or with a quick trip to a local home brew shop you can purchase a ‘mother of vinegar,’ a bacterial culture that converts alcohol into vinegar. When you have your mother, take a clean, empty gallon jug (glass works best), pour the mother of vinegar in the jug, and then continually add little bits of leftover wine to the jug. Shortly you will have some absolutely delicious red wine vinegar. Plus, for the one time investment in a mother of vinegar, you have a never-ending supply of vinegar. Not a bad use for wine you weren’t going to drink.

½ c sugar 

1 t vanilla

2 eggs 

½ c all-purpose flour

½ t baking powder

pinch of salt

½ t cinnamon

½ t cocoa (dutch processed)

¼ c red wine, I like bigger reds for this recipe

2 oz grated bittersweet chocolate

Preheat oven to 350°. In a large bowl cream together butter and sugar. Add vanilla and eggs and mix thoroughly. In a medium bowl combine dry ingredients. Gradually add dry ingredients to the butter mixture alternating with the wine until well blended. Fold in the grated chocolate. Pour batter into a buttered 8-inch cake pan and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Enjoy topped with freshly whipped cream and a glass of ruby port

1 medium shallot, minced

2-3 sprigs fresh tarragon

1 c white wine, dry is best

1 T + 1 t lemon juice

1 stick of butter, cubed (I said it was tasty, not low-cal or low-fat)

In a small saucepan combine the shallots, tarragon, white wine, and 1 T lemon juice. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and let simmer until reduced to about ¼ the original volume. Remove the tarragon sprigs and discard.

Add the butter, one cube at a time, whisking continually. Season with salt and pepper and stir in the final teaspoon of lemon juice. Pour over just about anything – it’d even be good on toast.

Today I bought the dvd Grease, and it came in a cute leather jacket around the case. When I got it home, I realized the jacket was the perfect size for a bottle of wine. Check out the picture!

So my question to you is which wine would you choose for a Grease movie night? Do you have any other favorite Wine & Movie pairings?

P.S. I always make sure to have a bottle of rum handy when watching pirate movies and a martini on hand for Bond movies, but those are easy

Interesting question. My first thought was Boont’s Farm, Mogan David, or wine coolers – after all what other wine do high schoolers get their hands on? Then, I thought that you might want something a bit more sophisticated than the former options. I mean I’ll go a long way for a good theme, but drinking Mogan David? That’s a bit too far even for me. Then it came to me, the grown-up Greaser’s wine – Red Zinfandel. It’s bold, brash, fruity – but not too sweet, plus I can’t think of a better bottle to put in a black leather jacket. With all of the racy labels out there – Sin Zin, Seven Deadly Zins – Zinfandel seems the perfect candidate for a little leather treatment. 

So, on to other movie night wine recommendations. Since my husband is a big fan of the Godfather trilogy (yes, the whole trilogy, he even liked number three), that seems a good place to start. I always have a bottle of Chianti, or Tuscan red of some sort in the cellar for an impromptu Godfather viewing. I find that the food friendly reds of Tuscany are the perfect complement to a ‘family’ movie like the Godfather. Cook up some Sunday gravy and you’ve got an evening. 

Some other recommendations:

My go-to movie night combo is bubbly or a super cold rosé (even white Zin) and super salty popcorn.

Mafia movies, other than the Godfather, I like Sicilian Nero d’Avola – intense, not too complicated, and a bloody hue.

Pirate movies, if you, like me, aren’t a big rum fan, go with port, preferably served out of a mug or stein.

French Kiss – Pinot Noir, preferably Burgundy.

Sci-fi – a Turley Zin? Wine that’s manufactured, in an unnatural fashion. Or, if it’s about pod people, a Napa Cab. 

Amelie – a good Cru Beaujolais, perhaps Fleurie.

Spaghetti Westerns – Rhone Rangers of course? Central Coast Syrahs and Rhone style blends scream cowboy.

Under the Tuscan Sun – Tuscan. Need I say more?

Super-hero movies – any Mondavi wine. He was basically a superhero in the American wine market.

Horror movies  - Petit Syrah – dark, inky, and intense.

B-rated Horror movies – a Beaujolais. Fun, fruity, and unabashedly simple. 

Finding Nemo – a fruity white from down under, like Marquis Phillips ‘Holly’s Blend.‘

Romantic Comedies – whatever she likes, of course! She is why you’re watching the movie in the first place isn’t she?

Musicals – whatever wine makes you want to sing and dance. For me? It has to be a rosé of Pinot Noir.

When Harry Met Sally – bubbly, naturally. What else for a movie that encompasses several New Year’s Eves and a couple of weddings?

I could go on, but by now you hopefully have a few ideas for the Netflix queue and/or the wine rack. Please comment with any great combos that I may have overlooked, or check out some of my new combinations. I always love a good themed movie night.

I am a big fan of pairing food and wines regionally – who am I to refute years of evolving culinary tradition to suit the wines from that region? Tonight, I will be sticking with regional pairing, but rather than searching the Bay Area for one of the grape wines now made in Mexico (yup, even Mexico is making wine), I’m going with Tequila, although I did contemplate good Mexican beer as well. While not traditionally Mexican, I plan to mix up a batch of really delicious margaritas – silver tequila, lots of fresh lime juice, and a scant splash of Cointreau. Now that’s what I call cultural appreciation!

I do love holidays like Cinco de Mayo & St. Patrick’s day. For me they are an excuse to have a celebration (not like I really need an excuse), and investigate culinary traditions. Rather than ‘Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are,’ I think the Brillat-Savarin quote would ring more true, if phrased ‘tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.’ To know a people’s food is to know a people. Why else would food be the one cultural institution that immigrants cling to for generations? While international travel may not be in the cards for us right now, we’ll have a little mini-break as we sit down to dinner tonight. Mmm….Carnitas!

As many of you know I’m all in favor of the family meal, and a big fan of eating at home, but why not make good recipes from scratch with whole ingredients rather than turn to the prepared foods aisles. It is just as quick and easy to make recipes from scratch, not to mention a whole lot better for you. I also find that the throwaway meals that my husband and I turn to from time to time when neither of us want to cook end up costing us a whole lot more than the recipes we make at home. Equally easy, better for you, and cheaper? Sign me up!

Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before folks catch on to the marketing racket of prepared foods, and start actually cooking. I’m not sure where this cooking stigma came from – the idea that cooking is complicated and time consuming, and that the average person needs short cuts to make dinner on a regular basis, but in my mind it’s a load of BS. While it may take a bit more forethought to cook from scratch than from a can, it’s worth the extra effort to make something wholesome and delicious and know where your food comes from.

I’ve taken to keeping a couple of pie crusts in the freezer for emergency dinner fixes. On a moments notice I can pop a crust out of the freezer, pull all of the leftover veggies from the fridge, fry up a little bacon, toss it all in the oven and dinner is ready momentarily. While the quiche is in the oven, I’ll make a nice green salad and pop open a bottle of rosé, or a pretty little Sancerre and suddenly the last night’s leftovers aren’t looking too shabby. 

It is sheer genius – a dish that can transform pedestrian leftovers and a couple of eggs into something so delicious and elegant. You get to clean out your fridge, and depending on what you fill your quiche with, you can pair it with almost any white or rosé in your wine rack. My favorite quiche complement would have to be Sauvignon Blanc, but I have been known to chill a Pinot Noir a touch with a heartier quiche. 

How do I perform this culinary alchemy – transforming old ingredients into delicious cuisine? Simple. Take a store bought crust and fill it with a half cup of sauteed onions or leeks, and a cup or so of some veggies – broccoli, spinach, chard, asparagus, mushrooms or any combination thereof, a half cup of bacon, ham, turkey, and good handful of cheese – anything shredded will work very nicely. For the custard whisk together three eggs, some salt, pepper, and nutmeg with 1½ cups milk, cream, ½ and ½, sour cream, or cream cheese or any combination of the dairy products. Pour the custard over all of your leftover goodies and pop it is a 350° oven for 30 minutes and voila! You have a delicious, elegant, and filling supper – how can you beat that?

Now, mind you, I’m not saying to throw out your wine rack and store everything in the fridge. First off – where would your milk and juice go, and secondly, your reds would be too cold. The average fridge temp is between 32-40° F, which is a little brisk for red wines, but an hour or two in the old chill chest will bring the temp down into a reasonable range for reds. I find an inverse proportion between weight of a red and the temperature I prefer to drink it – a big weighty Cabernet or Bordeaux is best served a bit warmer that a lighter Pinot or Cru Beaujolais, which can take more of a chill.

The fridge is also the perfect spot to keep that unfinished bottle, should you ever find yourself with unfinished wines. Yes, even the reds. Storing open bottles in the fridge will slow the process of oxidation and keep your wines fresher longer. Just because you store it in the fridge, doesn’t mean that you have to drink it straight from the fridge. Pour yourself a glass of red from the fridge while you are cooking dinner, and by the time you are ready to eat it will have warmed up a tad, and be just the perfect temp. So, next 90° day, pop your Pinot in the fridge before you toss the burgers on the grill, and your lightly chilled wine will not only be delicious, but nice and refreshing too.

Watching the budding oenophiles have their epiphanies I thought back to my early days of wine appreciation. Long, long ago, in my first restaurant job, I was sipping wine with the resident wineaux, and he asked what I smelled. My first answer? Red wine. He then asked a most obvious question, ‘What else?’ That was my first ‘a ha’ moment – suddenly my wine perspective shifted. I set the glass down on the table, and decided not to think about it as wine. As I brought the glass back to my nose, I took one big, deep breath, and without the expectation of wine – I simply smelled. All of the sudden I smelled morning – toast and jam, with a little coffee. Just like that, I became a wine lover. 

As is the case with learning any new subject, there is no set formula to make you a wine expert over night, but giving yourself free reign to take a big sniff and then let you mind run wild will inevitably help you become a better taster. When you recall that time you were snowed in at a friend’s house  when you stick your nose into a glass of Syrah, think about the details – were you making hot cocoa? Bacon? Was that leather-clad hottie also there? If you can figure out what scents are taking you to that memory, you’ll figure out what you are smelling in the wine, and not just take a walk down memory lane. 

Well, we spent our days walking to museums, restaurants, and markets. Suddenly I came to the realization that Americans have it all wrong. Let’s see – fast food, convenience stores, the degradation, if not total abolition of family meals, not to mention city streets that were designed for driving rather than walking — is it any wonder that we are fat?

Looking at the American diet it seems that we could take a pointer or two from the Europeans. In addition to eating seasonally and locally, they enjoy the richest foods in moderation, get regular exercise walking to the market to buy fresh ingredients for dinner, and treat wine as the fifth food group. Now, that is a diet I can get behind. 

First, we need to reclaim the meal. When was the last time you sat down to enjoy a meal? Probably the last time you treated yourself to a nice restaurant. In the interim meals become something we are forced to take part in on a daily basis – rarely more exciting than a trip to the post office. Think of the last movie you watched featuring an Italian family meal, or a lunch at a European cafe. People sitting down, talking, laughing, arguing, lots of food, a couple bottles of wine, and the sense that life has stopped for a moment. Sounds great doesn’t it? Well, don’t just dream about it, make it a part of your life.

Then, get yourself to a farmers market, or join a CSA. Nothing brings me more epicurean delight than strolling the aisles of a farmer’s market looking at all of the fresh produce, artisanal cheese, composing menus, and wondering if these blackberries really would taste good with the rosemary from a few booths back. Not only do you get to touch, smell and taste the food, but you get a sense of ownership and pride in the bounty that you carry home with you. Your inner hunter/gather is brought to the surface and suddenly you are excited to cook the broccolini and fava beans you found. Plus, walking the aisles of a farmers market can’t exactly hurt your waistline.

Finally, enjoy a glass of wine with dinner.  We’ve all heard by now of the numerous health benefits of enjoying wine in moderation – reseveratrol, anti-oxidants, flavonoids et al, but above and beyond all that the simple act of opening a bottle of wine to enjoy with your dinner flips a switch in you head which all but commands you to relax. You’ll find it nearly impossible to rush though a meal when you have a glass of wine in your hand. It may not be as quick or effective as Beyonce’s Master Cleanse, but I’ll take good food and wine over spicy lemonade any day of the week.

It wasn’t so much that the other pairings were bad, which they were, it was that they were opposite flavors and it ended up amplifying all of the wrong characteristics. The Viognier lost it’s delicacy against the hearty lentils and ended up tasting overly perfumey, and the Grenache/Syrah ended up taking on a muddy or dirt characteristic against the aromatic ginger in the soup. I didn’t think that the other pairings were going to be good, but I didn’t realize just how bad they were going to be either. 

I typically take wine pairings for granted – I’ve been thinking about wine and food together for so long, that it’s almost a second nature to choose wines to complement the flavors of the dish. It had been an awfully long time since I had a truly bad pairing, and tasting it last night I had to scrutinize what went so horribly wrong. I came back to the advice I got about food and wine pairing way back in my first restaurant job – like flavors will always complement unless the flavors are either too similar or too strong. Going back to the Viognier lentil pairing with this advise the answer was clear – the hearty, earthy lentil dish was way too far removed from the ethereal, floral flavors of the Viognier, and vice versa. 

What about the too similar, or too strong part of the pairing theory? This applies to your basic flavor components – sweet, spicy, tart, rich, and bitter. Pairing is all about balance, and you don’t want to go too far in any one of these directions, so here you look to contrasting flavors like a sweet Riesling with a fiery, hot dish, or a soft, smooth Orvieto with a tart Chicken Piccata. In essence you are dampening the strong flavor slightly by finding contrasting  flavors in the wine, rather than amplifying it too far by echoing the flavor in the wine. With that settled, I went back to my original pairings and enjoyed the rest of dinner. It’s fun to play with your food (and wine!).

Now, last night, my husband and I did have something momentous to celebrate – the first day of a new/old job, so we toasted his success with our favorite bottle of sub $10 bubbly, Cristalino, and had a beautiful antipasto plate. Yet, our celebrations are not always so noteworthy – each month we celebrate our little girl’s luniversary, as she turns one month older, we toast our dogs’ birthday every June 3, we celebrate the Calla Lillies coming up, the completion of our beautiful new wine cellar, the munchkin taking a two hour nap, all of the laundry being done (which, if you’ve been around an infant, you know is a big deal), the first fava beans of the year, Farmer Tom’s strawberries, the start of an exciting week, or the end of a long week.

I find that by marking these events with mini celebrations, you don’t risk letting time blur by, leaving you dazed and wondering what you missed out on. Instead, you stop and acknowledge the significance of these moments. It’s like putting a little tick mark on the calendar, and the more tick marks you have the more focused your recollection is. You’re not left holding your champagne flute on New Year’s Eve, feeling that it was only yesterday you were toasting in this year. That year’s worth of celebrations slow down the calendar and let you recall how far you’ve come since last year.

We only get one chance to ride this merry-go-round, why not celebrate the ride? 

We’ve been storing our wine in the crawl space under our house since we moved up here. We’re fortunate, in that we live on a ridiculously steep hillside (50 plus degrees), so while the crawl space is only 18 inches on the upslope side it’s easily 6 feet on downslope side, where we now have storage for over 500 bottles. So now rather than using moldy cardboard boxes (which smell way too much like corked wine for my tastes) we have an amazing cellar. Thanks love!!

The most fun part was getting to go through all of our wine, remembering where we got some of the bottles, rediscovering some bottles I’d completely forgotten about, and organize the bottles so I have a better idea of what we have. It’s only about half full right now, so I have plenty of room to grow, and we have enough room to stash our next round of home wine, which we have yet to bottle – our little girl’s birth got us a little behind schedule, but we’ll get it done soon. .

I think that it is a good practice for everyone with wine to ‘clean out the cellar’ occasionally, whether you have four bottles or four hundred, bottles can easily get put aside and forgotten. Going through your wines lets you rediscover lost treasures and relive the stories that go along with each bottle – you know the one you got as a congratulations from your coworkers, the one that you got at that cute little winery, or that one you scored on clearance – 75% off – how could you say no? You not only get to relive the story, but you create new stories when you open bottles that you are excited to try. Some moms get jewelry as a ‘push present,’ but I’ll take a brand new, custom, wine cellar over a necklace any day. I’ve got the best husband!

I’ve come to learn my family’s tastes so well because it is not uncommon for me to get a phone call from one of them while they are standing in the wine section looking to pick up a bottle for dinner. I always wonder what the other folks in the store think as they dictate the selections into their cell phone, stopping periodically to answer one of my questions about the meal – ‘It looks like they have a rose that’s G-A-R-N-A-C-H-A, and another Mataro. No, just aparagus. French wines? Wait a sec I’ve got to walk across the store. It’s the Alton Brown Dr. Pepper prep. Moulin-a-vent? Like Moulin Rouge? Glazed carrots.’

If you aren’t fortunate enough to have a sommelier on speed dial, first and foremost remember to choose a wine that you enjoy drinking. It may seem obvious, but buying a wine you don’t care for because it is what you’re ’supposed to drink’ is the most frequent mistake people make. If you drink what you like, you’ll always come out ahead. Second, don’t be afraid to try combos that don’t seem to make sense – that’s how I came to learn that Sauv Blanc is excellent with corned beef. And finally, take heart in the fact that nothing truly bad can happen if it’s a crummy pairing. You may not like the food and wine together, but it’s not like this is a ‘red wire or blue wire’ kind of decision. I can assure you that your dinner plate will not explode with the wrong wine selection, so try an Albarino with steak just because you like to roll your ‘R’ when you order it. The only definite rules are to drink what you like and don’t take yourself too seriously.

I realized that this is roughly what I aim to do with food and wine – turn the drudgery of getting dinner on the table every night into a simple pleasure, a chance for our small family to connect and delight in each others company. Neither the food nor the wine needs to be fussy or complicated, all that’s important is that it taste good and we all unplug for a little while (since my baby girl is so wired). While not every dinner is a peaceful, elegant meal, as very few things are particularly peaceful or elegant when there’s a baby involved, every meal is a chance to enjoy the simple things. Seeing how quickly my little girl is changing, it seems foolish not to enjoy each and every day.

Granted there is still a whole lot of non-descript plonk sold off in boxes, but a few innovative producers have realized the advantages of box packaging. Not only is the packaging cheaper than your traditional bottle, cork and label set-up (and we’re talking pennies on the dollar cheaper), but it is also a heck of a lot cheaper to transport as well, since your standard case of empty wine bottles weighs between 10-15 lbs. All of these savings add up and you are able to buy a nicer bottle (or box) of wine for less money.

Some of the first to begin selling quality wine in boxes were the producers of Vin de Pays D’Oc, including French Rabbit.  Even though in name it sounds a bit like sex toy, the wines are quite nice especially the Pinot Noir, and dare I say it, their Merlot. I’m not a big fan of the Chard, but that’s more of a stylistic preference than a quality issue.

Now you aren’t going to find wines you will want to cellar for years, but honestly most Americans age wine only as long as it takes to get from the liquor store to their dinner table, so check out boxed wine for your daily glass of vino. And honestly, if it streches a tight wine budget a touch further what is there to lose?

However this new legislation also includes winemaking terms such as chateau, classic, clos, cream, crusted/crusting, fine, late bottled vintage, noble, ruby, superior, sur lie, tawny, vintage or vintage character.  I’m guessing that the thought is that these terms are inexorably linked to the regions where they originated, but so many of the terms are common English terms with double meanings. Chateau and clos definitely are French terms, so perhaps have some validity. I agree with Alder in that there might still be some hard feelings towards Chateau Montelena from the judgement of 1976, with the inclusion of those French terms.

The rest of the terms, come on now. I guess American winemakers will now have to proclaim that their wines were aged on dead yeast cells, rather than sur lees, if they want a chance to sell their wine in Europe. The EU had my full support in keeping their place names sacred, but honestly this is overboard. I guess there will be no more dessert wines will noble rot, no wines with a hint of cream on the palate, and no more reds with a beautiful ruby hue sold outside of the US. Ridiculous if you ask me!

With two sets of grandparent hands available and more than willing to hold my little one I proceeded to rifle through the wine cabinet, always a favorite passtime. I know that my parents aren’t big wine drinkers, but there were several long-time tenents of the cabinet that are deemed “too nice to drink,” and I realized that I need to clue my mom in to Open That Bottle Night, or at least declare one night I’m in town to be an open bottle night.

There’s a big buzz in the culinary world about honoring the ingredients. Well, I think it is due time that we honor the wine too! What kind of service are you doing to the wine, and the winemaker who worked hard to perfect that bottle, if you turn the wine bottle into a tsatchke, sitting on a shelf collecting dust? The only way to honor the wine is to open it and enjoy it.  Yeah, you may not have it with the ‘perfect meal,’ but so what? As long as you enjoy it with friends and/or family, you are doing much better by the wine than just letting it collect dust. So what do you say mom, how about we pop that bottle of Veuve you’ve be saving?

First off, due to individuals state by state shipping laws, not everyone is able to order directly from wineries, or even from third party resellers. Yes, there was a Supreme Court case regarding direct shipping that received a lot of press back in 2005. In Granholm v. Heald the justices decided that it was unconstitutional to concurrently allow in-state wineries to ship directly to consumers, but not allow out-of-state wineries the same privilege. States responded by either allowing all wineries in and out-of-state to ship, or by not allowing any wineries to ship. All of the headache regarding liquor laws goes back to the 21st Amendment, the one that (thankfuly) ended prohibition, but also granted states the power to regulate and control alcoholic beverages within their boundaries. So, if you are fortunate enough to live in a state with relaxed liquor control, this blog’s for you. If not, sorry, you will have to continue to shop for your wine the old fashioned way. 

Back to the topic at hand – how do you know if you have a good online retailer. Buying directly from wineries is a good bet. Usually their websites are seriously lacking -the wine industry is not know for being technologically advanced, after all they are making wine roughly the same way it has always been done.  However they are happy to accommodate special shipping requests, because it means they are selling wine at full price without paying to staff a tasting room. 

If you want a broader selection, there are countless online retailers. Before purchasing from one of these stores take a close look at a couple of things.

1. Is it a wine auction? Are you buying wine from a retailer who has the wine in a temperature and humidity controlled warehouse, or an individuals private cellar?  Wine auctions can be a great source for rare or scarce wines, but they are not without risk. Be sure you only purchase from sellers who have stored the wines properly, and are willing to provide photos of label details and bottle fill level (too low indicates the bottle was stored improperly, leading to spoiled wine). Most wine auction sites have a seller rating – take note of it before you end up with a priceless bottle of vinegar.
2. Offer a variety of shipping methods. We all know how important temperature is in wine storage. Well what about the time that the wine spends in transit? Carriers do not have air conditioned trucks or warehouses, so ambient air temperature is going to be the temperature at which your wine is stored. Live in Phoenix? Your wine will spend hours in the summer heat before it arrives at your front door, another sure fire way to get a bad bottle. You should have the ability to select expedited service, albeit at a cost, or better yet have the option to hold your wine in their warehouse until the temperatures cool down. Many large retailers offer this option at no additional charge.
3. What days of the week will they ship wine? Again that pesky temperature problem – if you order wine on Friday, they should hold it until Monday, so that the wines are not sitting in an un-air-conditioned warehouse over the weekend.
4. Shop locally. There are several stores where you can make your purchase online, and then pick it up from the store. Not practical in every application, but it comes in handy when you don’t want to miss a sale, but can’t make it to the store right away.

Mind you – I am talking about serious rosé here, not that syrupy sweet white zinfandel, but intensely fruity, delightfully summery rosé. Everyone has that perfect vision of summer; you know, the one that gets you through even the coldest, dreariest winter day. Mine is sitting outside on a patio, amid beautiful scenery, sipping a glass of rosé. To me, pink wine is so inexorably linked with summer, that I can’t envision one without the other.

While I’ve been busying myself cleaning up the yard, planting herbs, and getting heirloom tomato seedlings ready to plant, I have forgotten my most important spring ritual – stocking up on pink wine. If you think of it as red wine ‘light’ – many of the flavors of red wine, but without all of the heavy tannins, you’ll get over fears that being seen a pink beverage is emasculating. That, and rosé wines were a favorite beverage of the über-masculine Ernest Hemingway. Oh, and did I mention that rosés are fantastic with barbecue? Just one of the many, or manly, reasons that real men drnk pink!

What to stock? Well,  there are the beautiful rosés of Tavel, in the Rhône Valley, which produces elegant, full-bodied wines.  Looking for something a little more rustic? A Côtes de Provence rosé or a pink from Rioja will be the perfect complement to salty olives and a balmy evening. We’re even starting to see a lot more rosé coming from domestic producers, as winemakers realize what a market there is for these yummy summertime sippers. As spring turns to summer cellar your reds, get outside, and pop open a bottle of rosé.

At which point my husband shook his head in bewilderment and asked how I could possibly guess what wine it was just from looking at the wine. Well, I have the advantage of knowing the bottles stocked in our wine fridge. Currently there’s a couple bottles of Riesling, a few Sauv Blancs, a French Chardonnay, a white blend, and a bottle or two of Santa Cruz Mountain Chardonnay. We purchased a case of the SCM Chard on sale a year or so ago. The first few bottles were really nice, but as it was an older vintage, 2001 I think, the wine did start to shows signs of its age. After opening a bottle over a year ago, I had sort of disregarded the rest and left a bottle or two around to collect dust. 

Last night the wine was so easy to guess because of the intense golden color in the glass. That deep color means one of two things – a botrytised dessert wine, or a wine that has oxidized slightly. Of the wines that we had in our fridge there was only one that would have that color – the Rieslings would be pale yellow, the Sauv Blancs rather pale as well, but with a little more of a greenish hue, the Viognier and French Chard would have a more intense golden tone, but nothing like this. This wine was almost the color of honey, and I made the very safe assumption that my husband would not choose a dessert wine to go with polenta with kale and mushrooms. That really only left the Santa Cruz Mountains Chard.

I would not say this sort of wine savant occurrence is frequent in our house, but I do alway try to think about the wines that we’re having and compare them to the wines we’ve had before. I also play games like this with my husband, and he with me. It keeps our limited cellar from getting boring, and I typically learn something about the wine, or the assumptions I’m making, every time we play ‘Guess that Bottle.’ It’s a cheap and easy way to develop your abilities as a taster – and it’s fun too!

Case in point – stale pistachios. I inherited my mother’s hoarding gene, and find it nearly impossible to throw anything out. I certainly wasn’t going to eat them, as stale as they were, so pistachio crust came to mind. Having never crusted anything with pistachios I figured I needed a little breading, half of an english muffin from the freezer (I really can’t throw food away), some dry herbs, and my stale pistachios head into the food processor.  After getting it all down to breading size, the mixture seemed kind of  gummy. Hmm…how to get rid of  the moisture? Ooo…toasted pistachio crust here I come and into the toaster oven until my kitchen smells yummy.

Now, what to crust? Tillapia sounds like a good option, so I pull some fillets from the freezer and set them out to thaw. I wonder what goes with pistachio crusted tillapia, well, let’s check food network.  After searching for a variety of pantry staples and getting lost in recipe-land for a bit, an Emeril Lagasse recipe for Swiss Chard Boules Stuffed with Lemon Barley “Risotto”  jumps out at me. I’ve got barley, swiss chard that I have to use because it’s almost veggie share pickup day, and my daughter is totally amused as I’m dancing about the kitchen singing show tunes to her, so I’ve got a little more time to cook.

The recipe has a roasted red pepper coulis to accompany the barley risotto.  I’m sure that I have roasted red peppers floating around the jars of condiments in my fridge so I search through mustards and chutneys to find them. Peppers in hand I realize I’m missing most of the rest of the ingredients, so I toss several red peppers, a tablespoon, or so, of yogurt, some lemon juice and S&P into the bowl of my mini-food processor and away we go.

Having grown tired of my South Pacific repertoire, I move on to Neil Diamond, much to my daughter’s delight, and contemplate getting the crust to stick to the fish. The traditional flour/egg combo seems a bit much for tillapia, so I opt for yogurt instead. Now that I have raw fish slathered in yogurt and topped with an oddly green mixture of pistachios and english muffin crumbs it’s to decide upon cooking method. Baking seems best, so I toss my Le Creuset grill pan on the range to preheat and the oven is already going for the Boules. Fish on the pan, pan in the oven, I’m feeling like Martha freaking Stewart right about now.

I should go pick an array of local herbs and knit a basket for them from fallen redwood duff, because, afterall, it’s a good thing, but instead I peer into the veggie drawer to see if there is anything else I can clear out. Veggie share is looming right around the corner and the crisper is way to full, so another vegetable for us. Asparagus, olive oil, salt, pepper, toss to coat on a wee little sheet pan and into the oven with the rest of dinner. 

Now, the really important question – what to drink with dinner. I opt for white because the fish should be pretty mild, and the coulis is not too strong or too smoky, both of which could warrant a red wine. To the wine fridge! Hmm… Sauvignon Blanc seems to acidic, not good with the peppers, Riesling too flowery and fruity. I finally decide upon a French Chardonnay, Joseph Drouhin Chardonnay Bourgogne, for the mild applely flavors and clean mineral notes. It was phenomenal! The wine had the right balance of richness and acidity, the barley risotto was fantastic despite my skepticism of lemon and bacon and the coulis was awesome with the fish and the risotto. I wonder to myself why I don’t cook like this every night, and remember, my little girl isn’t always so amused by my antics as to sit in her Sesame Street chair and listen to my wretched renditions of show tunes, laughing all the while. My husband and I toasted to a happy baby, Neil Diamond, and great food.

So what is the best bottle that I’ve had? Well, there was the bottle that I shared with a friend atop the Red Rocks in Centennial Park after a night hike, and the half bottle shared over an indoor picnic in London on a rainy day, the bottle my husband and I had before the sherif kicked us out of the beach during a sunset picnic, or perhaps the bottle of Champagne that my hubby and I chilled down in the sink of our hotel room in Reims on our honeymoon. What were the wines? I honestly don’t really remember. Why can’t I recall these special bottles? Because it wasn’t the wine that made the evening special, the wine was one part of these extraordinarily memorable evenings.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not making a communist argument that all wine is equal, and there are never any distinctions between wines. I’m quite sure that I really enjoyed the wine on each occasion – nothing can ruin an evening like forcing down a glass of swill, but the wine wasn’t the focus. Wine is not a hobby like coin collecting, or Pokemon cards where you’re presented with a comprehensive list to go out and acquire.

Wine isn’t a static collectible that holds one set value, wine is dynamic. The wine itself changes based on when you open the bottle, and your experience will be totally different if you share the bottle with dear friends over takeout with a much loved movie, or at a dinner party with work colleagues. Wine is one variable of a memorable evening, and it’s not even the most important one. If you share good food and good wine with people that you love you are bound to create many memorable evenings. 

They soon amass a vast array of the latest and greatest openers – perhaps a levered model, a rabbit, a ratcheting opener, and CO₂ cartridge system, spending ridiculous amounts of money on ridiculous, contrived, and bulky corkscrews. There are countless catalogs dedicated to ineffective and inefficient tools for the budding oenophile to collect and demonstrate his wine opening prowess.

Like with all hobbies, wine collecting gives you plenty of opportunities to buy stuff. After the wine openers have been collected, used once or twice then put away to collect dust in a drawer come the other wine accessories. Here you find coasters, bottle collars, filters, decanters, glassware, decorative glassware, bags, coolers, and even bottle lingerie, as if the sexual innuendos of wine descriptions weren’t blatant enough. The budding oenophile greedily gobbles up any wine widget he finds. These tchotchkes are a status symbo, showing that he is knowledgeable and passionate about wine. 

Then – the epiphany. You only have so much money to devote to a wine collection, why not spend it all on wine. Suddenly the need to have a third size of neoprene bottle carriers is only marginally important, and it takes a true innovation to pull dollars of the wine budget away from wine to buy a tool. Typically around this time all of the gadgets, widgets, and whatnots get unceremoniously ushered into a rarely opened drawer or cabinet, and one favorite opener rises to the top and stays out due to frequent use. Now the wine cellar starts growing gradually and all but a few of the wine toys get put away. 

I’ll admit it, I, too, have a drawer filled to the brim with useless wine gadgets, and a cabinet full of glassware that gets used a couple of times a year. To me, they are a badge of honor, proof that I made my way from clueless sipper to full blown oenophile. Occasionally I open up my ‘wine drawer’ and pull out an overpriced corkscrew, but for the most part I stick with my Pulltaps and stemless glasses, and keep it simple.

Rather than trust the old adage of white with chicken and fish, red with meat, think about the flavors of the dish as a whole. Coq au Vin is a very different flavor profile than Lemon Pepper Chicken – yet both dishes are supposed to be just delicious with any white wine on the shelf? You have to admit that doesn’t make much sense. Instead of picking up any bottle from the shelf – look for your cues in the dish and match, or complement, those flavors. The rich hearty flavors of  dark meat chicken, braised for hours in red wine – perhaps a red wine would be your best bet, while bright, citrus and spicy lemon chicken call out for something fresh, lively and probably white.

With mildly flavored meats, like chicken, fish, pork, and turkey the preparation and the sauce are more important to the wine pairing than the meat itself. Really hot and spicy sauces call for a lighter white with some acidity and some sweetness to cool the peppery fires – a Riesling, Pinot Blanc or Gewurztraminer all would be lovely. Creamy, or buttery sauces need acidity to cut through the richness – perhaps a PInot Noir or a Sauvignon Blanc. A wine based sauce? Match the wine to the sauce, red with red, and well, you get the point here. 

When you look at the meal as a whole, typically a dominate flavor will naturally step to the forefront and that is what you work with in your pairing. Be mindful of what you are eating and how it’s prepared and have fun with the wines. Dinner is bound to be anything but ordinary if you play with your food, and wine.

The consultant, that’s what happened. Granted the wine business isn’t the only industry to fall prey to the unscrupulous consultant, but it is a tragic fall. It seems that certain consultants have made it their business to travel the globe, extending their patented formula to every winery they see, in an effort to maximize profits and make good wine too. That’s the problem with the system – the wines are decent, very drinkable, fruity, pleasant, and with that omnipresent ‘kiss of vanilla,’ which, I swear, is a human version of catnip, but the highly-paid, globe-trotting consultant has made it possible to make this exact wine from any grapes grown anywhere.

This means that the consumer will have a good idea of what to expect, but at the expense of making something special and unique, a wine that tells a story in the glass, a Steinbeck-esque description of what is is and where it came from. I think that is something worth fighting for. Globalization has made it possible to get KFC in China, and is successfully robbing the countryside of local charm and color – it’s basically homogenization. Everything all ends up looking, talking and tasting the same. I want more from my wine, more than a patented winemaking process. I want to sit back and taste the wine’s rambling tale. Food and wine seem to be the last bit of local culture to fade into oblivion, hopefully enough winemakers will take pride in their grapes to keep wine from slipping into the nondescript uniformity of global winemaking.

1. Heart Health - Amidst all of the recent talk about polyphenols and resveratrol being heart healthy major publications have left out two major facts 1) all of the resveratrol studies done thus fsr are on mice and 2) to get the doses sufficient to affect heart health you would need to consume over 100 bottles per day but all is not lost! Alcohol, in moderation, raises good cholesterol, lowers bad cholesterol and reduces the formation of blood clots. So, even if it’s not for the reason you thought, wine is good for the old ticker.
2. Memory - Granted after too much wine you may not remember details to clearly, Professor  Matthew During of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, along with Dr Maggie Kalev have demonstrated that alcohol use challenges the brain and it responds by building memory. Too much alcohol and the memory building was focused on memories of highly emotional stimuli, but moderate alcohol uses demonstrated better retention across the board.
3. Trimmer Tummy Studies at the University of Buffalo have shown that folks who consume moderate amounts of alcohol on a regular basis (1-2 drinks per day) had less belly fat than binge drinkers (3+ drinks sporadically). Wine drinkers were shown to have slimmer waistlines than liquor drinkers and those who abstain from drinking, A similar Australian study showed 25% less belly fat on women who regularly consume wine than women who do not drink.
4. Bone Density - Dr. Katherine Tucker, of Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, found that, in women, one to two glasses of wine per day increased Bone Mineral Density by up to 5%. 
5. Better Blood Sugar Control – Recent studies have shown wine, specifically red wine, inhibits the activity of a target enzyme called alpha-glucosidase, which triggers the absorption of glucose from the digestive tract into the bloodstream, resulting in steadier blood sugar levels following meals.

Blindly following the vinistries of wine critics is as ludicrous as blindly following a cult leader’s claim that salvation will come from aliens, comets, or any combination of the two. It is appalling how people who practice critical thinking in every facet of their life will blindly purchase a bottle because it has been awarded an arbitrary point value. Perfectly rational people become glazed-eyed cult followers the moment they hit the wine department. It’s as though shelf talkers possess the uncanny ability to eliminate free will.

A wine can be good, and you can not like it. You don’t assume that because one person finds comfort in the words of a baptist minister that you will too, so why assume the same of wines?

All I’m asking for is a little evaluation in the wine department. First step – acknowledge your tastes. If you really only like white wine a 100 point Syrah will still be red wine. If you have never found a Pinot that you liked, chances are the next 98 point release isn’t going to do much for you.

The one group of wine drinkers whom I’ve seen embrace their tastes are the sweet wine drinkers. Most sweet wine fans have tried enough tannic reds to realize that they aren’t going to like them, so they unapologetically pick up a bottle of Riesling to take to a friend’s house for dinner. Bravo! Wine is a beverage, not a measure of sophistication. Drink what you like and you’ll enjoy it more.

After you have acknowledged your tastes make an effort to figure out which publication has given high ratings to wines that you really enjoy. If you see a trend – go with it. It may not be as clear cut as you always like 90 + point wines from one mag or another – you could find that you love Robert Parker recommended whites, Wine Spectator recommended Pinots, and Steven Tanzer’s recommendations in Cabernets. Yes, it will require some effort on your part, but it is really the only way to glean any valuable information from ratings.

So now it’s up to you – take your advise from a piece of paper or drink more wine, learn what you like and trust your instincts. Seems like an easy choice to me.

The chemical that causes the stink is trichloroanisole. Trichloroanisole can be found in cork trees that are exposed to pesticides containing chlorophenol compounds. This environmental pollutant is converted by naturally occurring fungi from chorophenols into choloanisole. Trichloroanisoles can also be the result of chlorine bleaching used to sterilize corks. The increased industrialization of cork production has resulted in more pesticides used to up production in the forrest, more bleaching, and more trichloroanisole. Wine Industry estimates range from 7-10% of all bottles using natural corks have some degree of cork taint. 

Individuals have different sensitivity to cork taint. I have seen folks that can sniff a corked bottle on an adjacent table, and others who cannot smell even the most corked bottle. Also, until you recognize that moldy newspaper, dank cellar smell that often dumbs down the rest of the aromas in the wine, a lot of them will literally be right under your nose without you being the wiser. 

Cork taint isn’t harmful, it is merely irritating and unpleasant, making your wine smell more like your basement than a lovely Bordeaux. Cork taint is also one of the reasons that servers go through the whole rigamarole of presenting you the bottle and pouring you a finger or so of wine to smell, to check the integrity of the wine and see if it is corked, or if it is showing any vinegary or sulfury smells. 

The prevalence of cork taint is the precise reason that many wineries have switched to synthetic corks and screwcaps (aka Stelvin closures). If you don’t use cork, you avoid cork taint and tricholoranisole. However, if it were a perfect solution every winery would be considering making the switch. Synthetic closures result in increased incidence of reductive flaws, or stinky rotten egg wines, but that’s a different blog post. 

Will we stop seeing cork all together as more wineries make the switch? I don’t think so. Not only are synthetic closures, well, unnatural, they also lack the romance of popping the cork on a bottle. There is something elegant and festive about the presence of cork – and honestly, where would crafty wine drinkers be if winemakers were to abandon the cork altogether?

First – a little science. The alcohol in wine is produced by fermentation. Fermentation is the process which converts grape sugars (measured in brix) and oxygen into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Naturally the more sugar you start with, the more alcohol you end up with. The conversion factor from sugar to alcohol is roughly 2 brix:1 percent alcohol. There is a limiting factor in this conversion – the yeast cells which convert sugar into alcohol are little living creatures. They have a set range of alcohol percentages in which they survive, as well as a set rate at which they can turn grape juice into wine.

So what gives? Why is it that the alcohol percentages are going through the roof? Here are the the main factors.

1.  Global Warming. Temperatures are on the rise the world over, resulting in longer growing season and grapes that are more ripe (higher sugar concentrations) at harvest time. Why not just pick the grapes earlier you ask. Well, sugar is not the only thing to develop as a grape ripens. There are also the phenolic compounds, or the scents and flavors of wine, that develop over the course of a growing season. Increased temperatures do not accelerate the development of the flavors at the same rate as the production of sugar, resulting in grapes that have a lot of sugar, but don’t taste ripe. To get the ripe flavors the winemakers allow longer ‘hang time’ (or leave the grapes on the vine longer) to end up with grapes that taste right, er… ripe, and they end up with super sweet grapes that make super strong wine. The drawback to this theory is that the resulting low-acid, high-sugar juice is a prime breeding ground for all sorts of microbial nasties, and sets a wine up for a flat and flabby texture.
2. Manufactured Yeasts. These days winemakers have a whole catalog of yeasts to choose from. Scientists have isolated strains of yeast from around the world and modified them to suit the needs of the winemakers. One major modification is increased alcohol tolerance. Yeasts naturally die off at a certain alcohol percentage, traditionally around 12%. If you start out with juice that is 30 brix and your yeast dies off at 12% alcohol you will end up with leftover, or residual, sugar. To avoid making sweet wines, winemakers have switched to yeast strains that are tolerant of alcohol percentages up to 21%! Suddenly there is no concern of residual sugar when choosing when to pick the vineyard. Regardless of the sugar concentration, the modified yeasts can do the job.
3. Because we’ve let them. Sadly many winemakers are, at heart, mad scientists. Rather than be satisfied with the status quo, these winemakers push the envelop to see what they can get the grapes to do. This has ended up with wacky and unnatural practices like fermenting wine up to 20% alcohol or more and then diluting it with water back to legal percentages, using color enhancers with names like Mega-Purple, and water evaporators to create a smoother mouthfeel. And sadly the public has gone along with it. Why haven’t we protested these abominations of winemaking?

Second, the flavor of the month in fashionable beverages went right from the martini to wine. The alcohol sodden, gin-numbed taste buds of the stylish sipper weren’t primed to pick up the finer nuances of an 8% Mosel Riesling. They were ready for a kick your teeth in, slap you silly, high-powered fruit-bomb. I mean they are accustomed to drinking two ounces of straight booze; a pansy-ass little 11% alcohol wine isn’t going to do much, now, is it?

Thankfully, I’m not the only one to think that high octane wines are a crime, and the wine industry is slowly responding. You’ll never learn and innovate unless you experiment, but I think this whole series of experiments need not be repeated. The pendulum of winemaking is swinging from the ‘mad scientist’ side to the ‘honor the land’ side, and fortunately the wines are swinging from nostril-burning to soft and subtle. Think of it this way – you can enjoy an extra glass of 11% wine and not feel horrible the next day. Do you really need another reason?

This swing away from food and wine pairing will result in people ordering wines that they don’t ultimately enjoy  just to show that they are part of the counter-culture that bucks fundamental wine-pairing sensibilities, and that is just ridiculous. I’m all in favor of bucking the fundamental and trying all sorts of new pairings, but to deny that certain wines are a better match is absurd. Yes, everyone’s palate is unique – but the wine chemistry and human physiology are consistent throughout all of us. There are rudimentary chemical reactions that cause some food and wine pairing to just work. While you, Alder, are a special and unique flower, you can’t deny basic science.

With as many individual wines as are out there it is absolutely naive to think that there is one wine, and only one wine, to go with any particular dish, but it is also naive to think that there aren’t certain pairings that taste better together. While I do agree that wine pairings are personal – what I like best won’t necessarily be what you like best, there’s a set of wines that will taste better than others with any given dish. If you don’t like any of the wines within that set, by all means order something else. It’s ludicrous to eat or drink anything that you don’t like.

What really gets me is that he (I’m assuming here) undermines the value of a recommendation. In restaurant – the servers are going to know more about the food, and more about the wine list than you do. Asking for a recommendation will help you find a wine you really enjoy. Naturally, should the server or sommelier fail to ask about your preferences – ignore the rest of what they have to say.  It is your preferences that will make or break a wine pairing, but within any selection of wines some will pair better than others; it’s your server’s job to know that. So, go ahead and ask the server what Cabernet to drink with the delicate filet of sole. His recommendation may surprise and delight you.

As to the notion that sommeliers are snooty stuffed shirts who look down their noses at the general wine-drinking public – this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The basic role of a sommelier is to facilitate (yes, I hate this word, but it’s the right one) the selection of an appropriate beverage for a meal. The training by the Court of Master Sommeliers includes beer, non-alcoholic beverages, liquors and liqueurs - so regardless of what you are looking it is the sommelier’s job to assist you in making the best selection for your meal. Their goal is to make the dining experience more pleasurable, whatever that takes. 

Having been a wine director in a high end restaurant, and having done the food and wine pairings in said restaurant, I know that my take on pairings was downright playful. My goal was to open eyes to new wines, unique pairings and emerging wine regions. Granted – I was partial to the old Foie Gras and Sauternes standard, but I regularly offered sake and wished that we had a full bar because there was one particular course that would have been killer with bourbon. A great pairing can be truly awe-inspiring, but only if you like both the food and the wine. When you do like them both – the wine enhances the food and the food enhances the wine, making everything taste better. So rather than claim that food and wine pairing is a racket – perhaps it’s just food and wine snobbery that’s a load of crap. Eat what you like. Drink what you like. And don’t take yourself too seriously. It’s only dinner after all.

Although I tested my new theory that crisp whites are a perfect complement to Corned Beef – and I have to say that the Torrontés would be much better served by a plate of salty almonds, and perhaps some ceviche. I guess that is what I get for breaking my own rule about local food with local wine (but come on now – Irish wine?!?). The sweetness the meat takes on from the pickling spice just did not play well with the floral component of the wine – but hey, you live and you learn. The Torrontés would, however, be a perfect little patio sipper, and I intend to get a few more bottles to have on hand for just such an occasion.

The Torrontés grape is native to Spain, but its moment in the spotlight didn’t hit until it emigrated to Argentina where it has become wildly successful. A distant cousin of Malvesia, Torrontés shares that pretty floral characteristic, but also has a little citrusy kick that makes you long for a beach umbrella and a gorgeous stretch of coastline.

It’s no surprise that Kinch was so successful with an ingredient like cabbage – after all he is passionate enough about ingredients to forge a relationship with a local grower Cynthia Sandberg, of Love Apple Farm, to get the best veggies possible in the kitchen. He found a way to honor the typically tough to deal with cabbage, and created beautiful food that must have tasted as amazing, since he received 28 out of a possible 30 points!

I do think he was robbed on the points for presentation – come on, his food was more than 1 point prettier than Flay’s. A couple of Flay’s dishes were only slightly more elegant than your standard Outback presentation. Kinch’s meal was so quintessentially Kinch that I half expected to see the Arpege Egg to start the tasting.

It is due time for Chef Kinch to receive recognition for his food. My congratulations come from being a devoted foodie – not a former employee. I couldn’t be happier for you Chef!

My go-to bottle is a $7 Chianti that’s always in stock at the local grocery store, Tiziano, never heard of it until I found it at the local grocer. It is a simple straightforward wine that is reliable, consistent, and homey. It’s always good with pasta and pizza – two of our go-to meals, and it is under $10, which is an important consideration for a bottle you are buying regularly. 

While I am wholly in favor of trying to wines often, and experimenting with your food pairings, I think it is really important for wine drinkers to have a bottle that they know and that they’re comfortable with.  It’s like the comfy sweater of your wine rack. Sometimes it just feels good to know its there. What’s your go-to bottle?

For dinner last evening it came in the form of a shrimp risotto and an unoaked Chardonnay. The risotto was rich, creamy, and nutty, thanks to the addition of a plethora of freshly grated parmesan. It was delicious and decadent, but on its own it did seem to be missing a certain something (no offense hon – you know I love your risotto).

That certain je ne c’est pas came from a bright, crisp, unoaked Chard by Clos la Chance. The wine was lovely on its own, but it was almost too bright, zesty, and acidic. It needed something to round out those crisp, clean edges. Then, in comes another bite of that luscious, creamy risotto, and wow!

It was perfect! The risotto, on its own, was too rich. The wine, on its own, was a bit too crisp. Though when you have the two together each offered something the other needed, and you end up with something so much more. Call it Gestalt or call it food science – I’ll call it delicious!

I brined the pork chops (thank you Cook’s Illustrated for saving me from dry meats) in a salt/brown sugar/cider vinegar and water solution, then tossed them on the grill pan – or rather the husband did the grilling, our daughter was in need of a change when dinner needed to hit the heat. Then the turnips were steamed with a potato, mashed and finished with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Finally after the kale was boiled for ~ 3 minutes, it went into a hot pan with butter, s & p, and a little balsamic when we (or should I say he) pulled it off the heat. Simple? Yes! Delicious? Definitely!

The wine? A Brouilly from from Pierre Dupond. What is Brouilly, you ask. Well Brouilly is one of the ten Cru villages in Beaujolais. Yes, these are light bodied wines from the same area as those electric labeled Beaujolais Nouveaus you see around Thanksgiving, but the Cru villages are set apart as being the highest quality locations to grow Gamay in all of Beaujolais. 

The wines of Brouilly are light-bodied and packed with bright strawberry and raspberry fruit and a pretty little floral characteristic. It was such a perfect complement to last night’s meal because the simply prepared pork needed a fairly straightforward wine, and the sweetness of the turnips and the balsamic were really nice with the bright, red fruits of the wine. We served the wine with a slight chill, not intentionally, but because I forgot to pull the bottle from under the house until right before dinner, and it was a excellent choice. All in all, better than most restaurant meals, and a heck-of-a-lot cheaper than restaurant meals. Especially since the wine was from our last stock up at the BevMo 5 cent sale, but unfortunately it’s not around this time. It may take a little effort and thought, but we are eating and drinking like the recession has already recessed. 

Sulfites are present in all wine to one degree or another as a small amount of sulfites are a by product of the fermentation process. Yes, even organic wines have sulfites, so don’t think you can dodge them if you go green. Sulfites are also added by winemakers the world over to prevent oxidation, ie spoilage.

Sulfites are typically present in higher concentration in white wines and roses, than red, as they are more susceptible to oxidation and it will be more obvious in the finished product. So next time someone tells you that they can’t drink red wines because they get a headache from the sulfites, tell them that could be the case if it were white wines that gave them the headache.  

There are folks out there that do have a sulfite sensitivity, not a sulfite allergy. Sulfites can cause breathing difficulty, sneezing, and headaches in people with asthma. Of course asthmatics are not the only folks to get headaches from wine, but to read more on this check out this New York Times article, they do the topic far more justice than I would. However this sensitivity is relatively uncommon, and it’s not a true allergy.

Actually wine is one of the few products that does label products as containing sulfites. Most of the products that use sulfites in the production do not disclose the use, so folks with sulfite sensitivity simply have to be aware of the products that they need to avoid – including wines that don’t carry the “contains sufur” label, as that is regulated only for concentrations above 10 parts per million.

For the vast majority of people sulfites are really nothing to worry about, as the warning label could have you believe. In fact, it is thanks to sulfites that the wines you drink taste as fresh and delicious as they do. 

First to the plate, Chardonnay. Now if you are looking to pair a Chardonnay with brussels sprouts you want to look towards the middle of the road. Too acidic, you’ll end up with a wine that tastes overly bitter. Too oaky, you’ll end up accentuating the sulfur component in the tiny cabbages. Too buttery, you’ll end up well drinking a buttery Chard, and that is just never good. Think about a Chard from anywhere in Burgundy that is not Chablis, or a domestic Chard that is toned down on the tropical fruit flavors, because, well, bananas and brussels sprouts, need I really say more.

Next to bat, Cabernet Sauvignon. This works especially well if your brussels sprouts are snuggled up to a big juicy steak. Granted, this is not a pairing for the faint of heart. The tannins of the Cab will stand up to the bold brussels sprouts, but you will be left with a slight bitterness, so if you are sensitive to tannins steer clear of this match-up.

And bating third, Syrah. To really hit it out of the park, cook the brussels sprouts with bacon. Aaah, c’est magnifique!! The bacon with the smoky flavors of the Syrah, the way the softer tannins of the Syrah tone down the bitter component of the sprouts, the way the leafy little cabbages soak up all that bacony goodness it really is true love. Check out the recipe for bacon and brussels sprouts and pop open a bottle of Syrah or Shiraz. Whichever name you call it, it’s going to taste delicious.

3 cups of brussels sprouts (these are rough approximations, I don’t measure when I cook!)

Walnuts or pecans, if desired

Trim the bottoms off and halve the brussels sprouts, even the littlest ones – more surface area to absorb bacony goodness! Toss the sprouts into a steamer basket and bring the water underneath to a boil. Cook until the sprouts are crisp tender.

Rough chop the bacon, throw it in a hot pan and let the bacon render its fat and become nice and crispy. Remove the bacon to a towel lined plate and leave the fat behind. Toast the walnuts (if using) until they become fragrant. Toss your cooked sprouts into the bubbling bacon grease and crank the heat up. Let the sprouts brown just a bit, remove from the heat and sprinkle the cooked bacon over everything. Serve with a bottle of Syrah and a tasty steak and you’re in heaven! If you think you don’t like brussels sprouts, try this recipe and you will.

First a brief history. American wines are labeled according to the varietal ie Pinot Noir, Merlot, or Chardonnay; whereas most European wines are labeled according to the growing region, and each region has a set group of grapes they are permitted to grow. Both styles of labeling provide the consumer with a good idea of what to expect, but labeling according to varietal doesn’t allow for blends of different grapes. Winemakers who choose to follow some of the European models for blending different grape varieties were limited to labeling their bottles as red table wine, a title usually reserve for $3 jug wine, not quality.

In comes a group of American vintners who want to practice the time honored art of blending. They want to make wines like the great first growths of Bordeaux, and I would imagine being able to charge as much didn’t hurt the cause any. They decide that they need to come up with a term that they can put on the label to indicate that the wine is a “bordeaux style blend” and after seeing all of the hullabaloo that was created by the Americans appropriating the term Champagne, wisely choose to find something other than Bordeaux.

So they come up with the idea for a contest to coin the phrase that will permit them to charge more coin for their wines. After sifting through more than 6,000 entries they found the winner in Meritage, a combination of the words “merit” and “heritage” and hence is pronounced like heritage. 

To call a wine a Meritage it must be a blend of at least 2 of the Bordeaux varieties (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Petit Verdot, Carmenere, and Gros Verdot for Reds; Sauvignon Blanc, Semillion and Muscadelle for whites), a wineries best wine of the type (read most expensive), limited to a maximum of 25,000 cases, and the winery must also license the term. So there ya go – a thumbnail sketch of Meritage, and feel free to correct your neighborhood wine snob next time he pronounces it meh-ri TAHJ.

The financial crisis, economic downturn, recession or whatever the label du jour is, isn’t just affecting individuals but businesses are also hugely affected, businesses like, say, your local liquor superstore. Every ad you look in there is at least one wine that they are offering at a huge discount, some upwards of 50%, so if you shop smart you can drink better and pay less. If you are in California, the BevMo 5 cent sale is on again (sorry to those of you who can’t take advantage of these bargains). 

Another option to find great bargains is to talk to the folks in the wine department. Believe me, there budget is squeaking as much as yours, but that’s not going to stop them from enjoying wine. They know where all of the really amazing deals are because they take advantage of these deals to stock their cellars. When you find a deal that is too good to be true (a great Australian Cab/Merlot for $3.99!!!!), take advantage of it and stock up. You can drink great wine every night of the week on the cheap! And when you do find those great deals – email me. I’m always bargain hunting for our cellar.

It is rumored that the champagne coupe, or the flattened saucer-like champagne glass was originally molded from the breast of Helen of Troy.  As the Greeks believed that wine drinking was a sensual experience, it was only fitting that the most beautiful woman take part in shaping the chalice. Upon hearing this story Marie Antoinette thought it fitting that the French enjoy the same honor and she commissioned an artist to take a mold of her breast for the same purpose.

Champagne can be made from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, or a blend of these grapes.

The vineyards of Chateau Petrus are almost exclusively Merlot, making it one of the most expensive and highly sought after Merlots in the world. 

Keep a cork around, next to your sink. Rubbing the end of a cork against the blade of a knife will get almost anything off it, and it won’t scratch or abrade your knife blade.

The Egyptians were the first to use cork as a closure for wine.

Grape vines do not reproduce reliably from seed. It is far easier to use the cuttings left after pruning a vineyard to obtain new grapevines.

Beaujolais Nouveau cannot legally be released until the third Thursday of November.

There is at least one bonded winery facility in each of the fifty states (that’s right, Alaska too).

The first commercial winery in the US was founded in 1806 in Indiana.

The primary acid found in grapes is tartaric acid, which when crystalized and ground yields cream of tartar. Grapes are the only significant source of cream of tartar.

You can make a white wine from red grapes. The color of red wine comes from leaving the juice in contact with the red skins. Rosé wines are made by leaving the skins and juice together for a very short time.

Varietal refers to a finished wine made from a single type of grape. Before it’s wine, the correct term for a specific type of grape is variety.

The frosty looking coating on the outside of grapes is called flor. The flor contains naturally occurring yeast cells, so if you crush grapes you will end up with wine (no guarantee of the quality of this wine).

In addition to tartaric acid, grapes also contain malic acid (the tart acid of green apples) and citric acid (you got it – same as in citrus fruits).

Tannins bind to proteins in salvia, resulting is a drying senaation in the mouth. Tannins will also bind to animal fats (cream, butter, marbled steak). This is why red wines are good with rich, fatty foods – they actually refresh your palate by binding to the animal fats that coat your mouth.

Chateauneuf du Pape and Chianti are two types of wine that can blend white and red grapes into a finished red wine.

Sparkling rosé wines are made by adding a small amount of still red wine to sparkling white wine.

Please use these facts to one up the wine snob at your next cocktail party. Wine snobs become much more tolerable when there wine ego is put in check!

Don’t look for Burgundy and Chablis in the bulk wine aisle. Instead look in the French wine section for some of the finest examples of Pinot Noir coming from Burgundy and elegant, minerally Chardonnays coming from Chablis. Granted I think the vintners of Champagne have gone a bit too far with their countless lawsuits against wineries the world over, but at its heart I do support their claim that only they should be allowed to call their wines Champagne. I’m sure that the winemakers of Burgundy, Chablis, and Champagne would love to remove the association their regions have had with low-quality plonk since EJ Gallo first made a Hearty Red Burgundy.

These are not the only terms to fall victim to the American marketing machine. Reserve is a term given to a specific wine to imply that is of a higher quality than usual, or a wine that has been aged before being sold, or both, or at least that is what it traditionally meant. In parts of Europe the term reserve/reserva/riserva actually still holds water, due in large part to the governmental restrictions associated with the term.

In America there is no such restriction, and therefore every label of KJ Chard is labeled as “Vintners Reserve,” a wine obviously extremely special as exemplified by its ubiquitous presence at the end-cap of every other aisle in your liquor superstore. Kendall Jackson actually had to adopt the term “Grand Reserve” to indicate a true reserve wine.

Old Vines is another term that holds little to no weight. It is commonly associated with vines older than forty years, but since there is no legal definition I could easily label a wines as “old vines” when in fact the vines were a mere ten years old, or I could use the term to indicate a certain characteristic of the wine. The same is true in France where “vieilles vignes” has no legally agreed upon definition, or even any generally agreed upon definition. 

How can you tell if you should pay extra for that bottle of “reserve” wine? In Spain, Italy and Portugal there are specific laws governing the use of the term on wine labels, so you know there is something different about the reserve bottle versus the regular bottling. In the US, generally, the more reputable the producer, the more likely the term “reserve” has a genuine meaning. You can also look for regular bottling of the same wine. If there are two different bottlings, it’s likely that there is something special about your reserve wine. 

Marketing is marketing, and wineries will always be trying to sell you something. With a little knowledge on your part, you can make sure they’re not selling you a load of bull.

If you are in a restaurant with a lovely, if very tart vinaigrette, and you can’t exactly ask the chef to change his dressing recipe to suit your wine, look for a high-acid sparking wine, a bone-dry Sauvignon Blanc, a dry rosé (and I do mean dry, white zin just ain’t gonna cut it), or perhaps a racy little Albariño. All of these wines have a high enough acid level that you’ll still be able to taste them after a bite of your salad.

If you are at home there are a few tricks you can play to make your salad a bit more wine friendly. 

Up the richness – by adding proteins, nuts, or cheese. Let’s face it richness is basically the same thing as fat, and as we all know fat tastes good. What the increased fat content does is it gives the acid in the vinaigrette something to cut through, and it makes the acid in the dressing less likely to fight with your wine.

Lower the acidity - by using a milder vinegar, citrus juice rather than vinegar, or increasing the oil:vinegar ratio of your dressing. Also think about wine vinegars or balsamic vinegars to help your dressing lower its tartness quotient.

Send in the salt – adding salty components like olives, capers or anchovies will also help tone down a tart vinaigrette.

Whichever way you look at it a glass of wine and and a nice salad make for a lovely, light supper. You might as well make it taste as good as possible and enjoy it often!

I was a bit sad when I realized that I had missed the official Open That Bottle Night (which for those of you new to the holiday is the last Saturday in February). I guess I’ll have to wait a whole year before breaking the foil of that pretty little Volnay I’ve been cellaring, but then I realized that undermines the whole ideal of the Night. Rather than let my special bottle sit collecting dust for another I need to declare my own personal Open That Bottle Night. Tonight’s out because I already have my sushi takeout order in and Pinot Noir and wasabi do not a lovely pairing make, but I do think that tomorrow is looking very good! Join me and declare your own night to open that bottle. I’ll let you know how the Volnay is.

See - look at the color and clarity 

Smell  - stick your nose way down in the glass and take a big sniff

Sip - see if the flavors match the aromas, check the balance of the wine, judge the weight and finish.

Each step has its own language associated with it, so let’s start at the beginning.

When tasting, you first look at the wine to judge the color and clarity of the wine. To describe color you’re better off consulting a color palate, so we’ll skip that part. Clarity ranges from cloudy to brilliant. Clarity is desirable as cloudiness is a sign of winemaking mistakes and often indicates an unpleasant taste. A hazy wine is generally clear with a slight particulate content when viewed against the light. Occurs most often in unfiltered or unfined wines.  A clear wine has no obvious particulate and is well…clear. A brilliant wine is exceptionally clear, almost sparkling.

The rim is the edge of a wine’s surface seen when the glass is held at an angle over a white background. It can be used to evaluate a wine’s age – if it is pink, ruby or purple the wine is likely young, if it is orange or brown the wine is likely older. The legs refer to the liquid rivulets that form on the inside of a wineglass bowl after the wine is swirled  and help to evaluate the alcohol concentration present. Usually the higher the alcohol content, the more impressive the rivulets appear because of reduced surface tension effects. Not a good indicator of quality, but mesmerizing to watch.

You often hear nose, aroma and bouquet used interchangeably. All of these terms do refer to the scent of wine, but they’re a little different. Nose refers to the aggregate of all of the scents in a glass of wine, the way the wine as a whole smells. Aroma refers to one specific scent in a wine, like the aroma of vanilla. Bouquet is the set of secondary aromas that develops as a wine ages, or as it opens up (becomes more fragrant) in the glass. 

Once the wine is in your mouth you evaluate the balance, weight and finish. A wine’s balance is measured by the relative sensations of sugar, acidity, alcohol and tannin. In a well balanced wine, none of these characteristics stands out. Tannins are naturally occurring substance in grapeskins, seeds and stems. They are responsible for the bitter or astringent component in wines. Think of holding an aspirin tablet on your tongue - that is tannin. Tannins act as a natural preservative. It is considered a fault when they are present in excess. Tannins have no aroma, so feel free to laugh at the posers who claim that, “this wine smells really tannic.”

The weight is a measure of the body of a wine. When thinking of the body of a wine think about milk a light bodied wine feels like skim milk in your mouth, a medium bodied wine feels like 2% milk and a full bodied wine feels like whole milk in your mouth. 

A wine can be described as austere, indicating that it is dry, relatively hard and acidic, lacking depth; round indicating that it gives a feeling of completeness with no dominating characteristic; soft indicating that it has low acid, tannin, or alcohol content, and subsequently has little impact on the palate; or hot indicating that it is overly alcoholic, and has a bit of a burn.

The finish of a wine refers to the taste it leaves in your mouth after swallowing. If you stop tasting it immediately, it has a short finish. If the taste lingers for 30 seconds to a minute the wine has a long finish.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does highlight some of the more notable wine tasting terms. Now go find one that is nice and round, full bodied with great legs – a wine that is. 

For those of you not familiar with Viognier (VEE-ohn-yay), here’s a little more about this unique grape. Viognier is a white grape native to the Rhone Valley in Southern France. The wines are known for their floral, almost perfumed, aromas. For the most part Viogniers are meant to be drunk while they are young and fresh. These are not generally wines for the cellar. It is a fairly low acid wine so when it is good it’s full and soft on the palate, but when it’s bad it’s flat and flabby. One particularly unique tidbit about Viognier is that it is often blended into red wines to soften the wine, and add a pretty floral character.

As for regions Viognier is grown in the Rhone Valley of France, Central California, South America and Australia. Look to Australia for good value in Viognier. The wines are typically very tropical and floral. but beware they’re occassionally very low acid wines so you may encounter the flat and flabby wine when sipping down under. Yalumba ($9) makes a nice Viognier, d”Arenberg’s ‘The Hermit Crab” ($12) is a lovely Viognier blend, and most of the wines coming from the relatively cool Eden Valley are safe bets.

Domestically Pepperwod Grove ($8) makes a pretty Viognier which is relatively easy to find, as is Eberle ($18). Alban ($45) and Adelaida ($30) are both not as readily available, but well worth the search. for a stateside Viognier blend find a bottle of Pine Ridge Chenin Blanc Viognier blend ($12) – really floral with pineapple and melon fruit flavors.

If you want some of the prettiest examples of Viognier, and you don’t mind dropping a pretty penny look to the wines of Condrieu. Guigal ($50) makes a spectacular example, ripe with peach, melon and honeysuckle. For a little less coin the wines of Chateau Grillet are a nice alternative, or in the south of France the Coteaux du Languedoc Viognier from Laurent Miquel ($13).  

When pondering what to pair with your bottle of Viognier I would suggest a lemony roast chicken or anything with Herbes du Provence. It is a nice food wine, but lovely as an aperitif as well.

As is often the case – it is probably easier to describe what a foodie is not. A foodie is not pretentious. A foodie doesn’t equate price directly with quality. Foodies do not hold any one class of food in reproach. A foodie cannot subsist on foie gras alone.

A foodie is someone with an irrational fascination  with food. A foodie is equally willing to try a roach coach as a four Michelin star restaurant in search of great food. A foodie begins to salivate at the mention of her favorite deli. A foodie has a favorite deli. Foodies often subscribe to food related publications, listen to food related radio shows or podcasts, and research restaurant reviews before traveling anywhere. Perhaps irrational fascination is too mild – it may well be an unholy obsession. 

I currently subscribe to four, no wait, five food publications. Even though I’ve had some good ones, I am still in search of the best hot dog around. Most trips I take are completely centered around the food I plan to eat while there. Actually there are some hypothetical trips that are structured entirely around one restaurant visit – Arpege, El Bulli, Le Bernadin – regardless of what else I do that trip, if I eat that one meal I’ll be happy. 

Yet, at the same time my death row meal includes no escargot, påté, or terrines. I’m still in the air on this one - but right know the frontrunners are the Bun thit nuong at the Vietnamese restaurant I’ve gone to since childhood, my mom’s spicy mac n’ cheese, and a perfect roast chicken for my last supper. Food aspires to be innovative and exciting, but food should always be comfortable and satisfying. Whether it’s the one we came from or the one we’re trying to get to, food is home.

First, the server will present the bottle to you. Your job is to take a look at the label and make sure that it is the wine that you ordered. Occasionally a restaurant will have two labels both from the same producer, so this is a chance for both you and your server to verify that the bottle she is holding is the bottle you want.

Next the server will open the bottle and offer you the cork. There is little more pretentious than smelling the cork. You want to know what it’s going to smell like? Cork. There is a lot that you can tell from the cork, but by looking at it, not smelling it.

When looking at the cork check to verify that the name and vintage on the cork (if there is a name and/or vintage) matches the bottle. If it doesn’t the bottle was likely recorked, or mislabeled – either way it is a problem and should be sent back. You also want to make sure that the cork is free of visible defects – cracks, mold, wine stains running the length of the cork. These are not guarantees that the wine within is bad, but they are definitely red flags. Make sure that you smell the wine carefully and thoughtfully if you see any of these warning signs.

Now the server will pour a small taste of wine in your glass. You swirl, sniff and taste the wine. You are checking to be sure that the wine has not spoiled, not whether or not you like it. If the wine is good it will smell like, well….wine. If it smells like vinegar, nail polish remover, onions, wet cardboard or otherwise ‘off’ tell the waiter. In the case of a spoiled bottle the waiter will bring another bottle of the same wine and you will start the dance all over again.

In the vast majority of bottles the wine will be just fine, and you should indicate this to the server. With a simple nod from you the server will pour the wine, set the remainder of the bottle on the table, and you have made it to the end of the dance without a stumble. Now it’s time to sit back and enjoy dinner.

I had grown a bit tired of Sauv Blanc, which is often the only other white available by the glass for those of us who don’t love oaky, buttery Chardonnay. Recently though, I have been pleasantly surprised, dare I say refreshed by the food pairing capabilities of this crisp, grassy wine. With St. Patty’s day right around the corner pick up a couple of bottles -one for your Corned Beef and Cabbage, and another to try with another menu.

A wine’s base price is derived from cost of production. This factors include the cost of the grapes,  cost of labor, not to mention the cost of materials – barrels, bottles, equipment and the facility.

Grapes can range from $1K to $10K an acre. Figure there are approximately 4000 bottles produced from 1 acre so grapes contribute anywhere from 25 cents to $2.50 to the bottle cost. More expensive wines require more labor at every stage of the game – in the vineyard, during fermentation, and during barrel aging so labor costs vary significantly.

American oak barrels cost about $400 while French oak barrels are around $800 new. If you figure there are 300 bottles in each barrel of wine you are paying for $1.30 – $2.70 per bottle for the oak aging. Bottles range from 50 cents to $2 depending on weight and shape. Corks can range from 10 cents to a dollar. Boxes can range from 10 cents to $1 per bottle. Every choice a winemaker makes affects the perceived quality and in turn the projected price tag of a bottle.

The simple perception of quality changes the price significantly. If a winemaker wants to be known for making the best Napa Cab he certainly isn’t going to charge $10 a bottle for it. No one would believe that it was the best around at that price. However just by adding a zero to the price tag, the consumer assumes the bottle to hold a higher quality product.

On top of production costs, and perception factors both the distributor and the retailer want to get their share of the profit. If you are paying $50 in the store, you can assume that the bottle left the winery at around $25-30. But it doesn’t get any better if you go direct to the winery. Retailers stay in business by offering the wine at a lower price than you can find it at the winery. You pay for the winery experience, not just the wine, when you buy at the winery.

Of course scarcity factors in significantly. That nasty old law of supply and demand – when supply is low and demand is high you can ask whatever price the market will bear. Think about the most expensive bottles out there. They are very rare – either old or very limited in production.

Then come the reviews. I hate to think of how often I have found a great bottle in the $10-15 range only to have the price shoot up to over $20 when it gets a stellar review in Wine Publication X. The other way to affect the supply and demand curve is to increase demand, and a killer rating or other prestigious accolade inevitably does that.

You need only be concerned with yourself. Like art, a wine is only worth what you would pay for it. Find bottles you enjoy in the price range you’re comfortable with and that’s how you determine good value.

The same scents are present in wine as are present in countless fruits and vegetables. The average person is said to be able to distinguish over 1000 different scents at a time, but can usually only name a few of them. You can improve your odds in the scent game with a little bit of easy training. Just smell stuff wherever and whenever you can.

As scent is the sense most closely tied to memory you will find yourself recalling long forgotten pies that grandma baked, children’s toys, or perhaps lost loves when you start. Use these memories to help you – what kind of pie? Did grandma bake with a lot of spices? Is it the plastic or the artificial strawberry scent from your old Strawberry Shortcake doll that you are smelling? Did that ex wear a leather jacket? You can start to see how the aromas are emerging – blackberry, baking spices, petroleum, strawberry, leather. With a little thought these memories will help you pick out individual scents.

Just by being conscious of what you are smelling you can start to train yourself to associate a scent with a word. Next time you are in the produce section pick up a green pepper take a big sniff and really think about it. You are doing two things here – isolating the green pepper aroma and teaching yourself that this is what a green pepper smells like. As you learn the individual smells it becomes easier to pick them out of a wine, and by associating names with all of the scents you encounter you’ll find you soon recall the name of the food. I might suggest starting with 2 or 3 fruits each grocery trip. More and you’ll overload your nose, not to mention all of the funny looks you’ll get. In no time you will compile your own extensive wine vocabulary.

By now you’ve seen the new trend of stemless wineglasses as it seems to be in every store these days. I have to say, when they first came out I was wholeheartedly against them. At the time I was living in a one bedroom apartment with my cat. It was soon after I passed my sommelier test, and whenever I would open a bottle of wine I would leisurely select the appropriate Riedel glass for the wine.

Times have changed since then. I now have a beautiful baby girl, who thinks that standing is the coolest thing ever, though she’s not terribly good at it yet. I also have two enthusiastic Vizsla-Rottweiler mixes whose tails swing about eight inches above our coffee table, prime wine glass range. Somehow elegant, stemmed, crystal glassware just doesn’t seem terribly practical on a daily basis.

We still use our Reidel glasses on a fairly regular basis – when we have company, or when we open a particularly nice bottle of wine. They are absolutely lovely and a very elegant addition to the table. When drinking from a stemmed glass you don’t change the temperature of the wine by holding the bowl of the glass. You also don’t grub up the appearance of your lovely glass with a bunch of greasy fingerprints. This is all wonderful, especially when you are opening that bottle of 1999 Gevrey Chambertin you’ve been holding onto, but what about Wednesday night when you’re having burgers for dinner.

The stemless glass to the rescue. Sure it doesn’t look as elegant as a stemmed wineglass, but wine doesn’t always have to be elegant and fussy. Sometimes you just want a bottle of jammy Zinfandel with a juicy burger hot off the grill, reach for your stemless glasses. And I swear, Italian wine never tastes as good in a stemmed glass as it does in a stemless glass. Something in the Italian winemaking is so straightforward and down to earth that a stemmed wineglass actually seems to take away from the wine.

Reidel has even gotten into the stemless game with their ‘O’ series. Rather than spending a fortune on your informal glasses look at Crate and Barrel or IKEA, where the sets are cheap enough to buy in bulk. These are the perfect glasses for the $7 bottle of wine you pick up to go with pizza. Keep it simple. Wine doesn’t have to be complicated.

People let themselves become so overwhelmed by their day to day lives that many stop being present in their daily activities. Mealtime is often the first casualty, forfeiting a sit down dinner for the convenience of a fast one. It seems to me that amid the chaos of a hectic schedule taking time for a simple meal and a nice glass of wine would do more to help than it ever could hurt.

If you take a few minutes and really focus your attention on your meal, meal prep, and wine pairing, suddenly the worries of the day fade away, and you become aware of the simple pleasure of dinner. Once you are aware at the dinner table, you become more aware of what you are tasting. Once you are aware of what you are tasting you become a better taster. Once you become a better taster you enjoy your dinner more. Once you enjoy your dinner more you relax more during the meal. See where I am going with this?

Being aware during meals can be a form of stress relief in itself. Hmm… meditation and deep breathing or chanterelle mushrooms and PInot Noir? It’s an easy choice for me. I’ll meditate at the dinner table every night of the week.

You may think that you would automatically know red from white – that your palate is so well trained that you would pick out the fruit flavors immediately. Heck, you could even tell a Russian River Pinot Noir from an Oregon Pinot Noir. Maybe you can. But then again, maybe you can’t.

Taking color off the table as a way to evaluate the wine makes you think about the rest of the wine. When looking at the acid balance, the flavor components, the tannin structure (or lack there of), and the alcohol level alone you suddenly are forced to really analyze and evaluate. Often times tasters end up with a much more honest evaluations of their preferences after such a tasting. The prejudices fall away and you judge the wine on its own merits, rather than presupposing you will not like it based on the color you see in the glass.

If you don’t want to drop the money for opaque glasses you can simply taste the wines in your kitchen, with the lights turned all the way up. Bright lights and white room put you into a more scientific and analytic frame of mind, whereas tasting the wines in your cozy living room by firelight will put you in a more emotive state. Granted you won’t have your red vs. white prejudices crumbling at your feet, but you will taste more analytically which will teach you a lot about the wine and your preferences.

Actually that in itself is a good exercise for most new tasters. Before you sit down to dinner, pour yourself a small taste of the wine and try it in the kitchen, or another brightly lit room, away from the creature comforts of your couch or dining room table. As you taste the wine, really take a moment to think about it, even dive into the fridge or herb cabinet to compare and see if it’s lemon or lime that you smell. Then top off your glass and enjoy the meal. Every time that you taste wine analytically you are training your palate, and turning yourself into a better taster.

Many wine drinkers stray away from the Bordeaux appellation because the famed first growths have associated the region more with big money than with big value. But if you look at some of the second and third growths, or even the Cru Bourgeois wines, you can get all of the flavor for a fraction of the price.

If Bordeaux is your first foray into foreign Cabernet blends don’t expect the bright berry flavors of California Cabernet Sauvignons. The wines of Bordeaux tend to have a broader spectrum of flavors – showcasing licorice, leather, smoke, pepper, tobacco and a stemmy sort of fruit quality. These wines are definitely interesting. The kind of wines that you keep coming back to the glass and finding something else new and intriguing. This is not a wine you turn to on a night where you are drained and just want to chill in front of the tube and sip a glass of wine. This is a glass of wine that makes you think. At the very least you’ll think up bad puns about wine regions.

The reds of Bordeaux are typically a blend of mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc with small amounts of Malbec and Petite Verdot, which leads to the depth and richness of flavors. If you want a Cabernet Sauvignon dominate blend look for a bottle from the Medoc or Graves regions, aka left bank regions, as they are on the left bank of the Garrone. If you want a Merlot based blend look to the Saint Estephe, Paulliac and Margaux regions.

Look for a bottle of Bordeaux next time you are having a big juicy steak with some Pommes Dauphinoise (au gratin potatoes). When you are pairing with Bordeaux think rich, meaty and fatty flavors and you’ll be very happy.

What is more romantic than sparkling wine? Don’t just think of Champagne. There is really outstanding bubbly coming from all over. If you want extreme value may I suggest the Cristalino Cava from Spain. At around $6 you can pick up a few bottles, perhaps one for an aperitif, one with the meal and another for breakfast the next day. It drinks like an expensive bubbly, but without the price tag. Prosecco is also a great find for budget bubbly, look for Zardetto ($12) or Mionetto ($15). Domestically – Domain Chandon ($15) Blanc de Noir, it’s blushy pink color will look gorgeous on your Valentine’s table.

If you don’t share my bubble fetish then there is always Pinot Noir. If adjectives like soft, supple and silky don’t get you in the mood, I’m not sure how a you expect a bottle of wine to do the trick. If supple sounds sexy than try Gary Farrell ($38) Pinot from Russian River Valley, the Louis Jadot Bourgogne ($20), and the Edna Valley Pinot ($20). A little pricy, but nothing pleases the palate like a Pinot.

If you want a sweet treat but want to treat you wallet right as well look for wines from Ste Croix du Mont, an appellation next door to Sauternes but without the hefty price tag. They can be hard to find but they are worth the search. A perfect way to finish the meal without breaking the bank. 

Like with Like Flavors. But remember this will amplify the like flavor, so pair judiciously. A sweet wine with a sweet dessert can be a beautiful complement or it can turn into a train wreck if either the wine or the dessert are too sweet. Same goes for tart or acid flavors. You will get your mouth puckering fast if you pair a crisp Sauv Blanc with a really lemony vinaigrette. As you are exaggerating the flavor, this route works best with flavors that are subtle to begin with. Other flavors to consider – earthy (Pinot Noir & mushroom), berry (Shiraz & blackberry), herbal (Gavi & pesto), citrus (Sauv Blanc & lemony beurre blanc).

Contrasting Flavors. This can add interest to a meal and works beautifully with sweet and spicy. Think of it like hot and cold – a sweet Riesling cools the fire of a spicy dish. Use common sense and keep the flavors moderate with sweet & sour, you don’t want to end up with a wine pairing reminiscent of a Sweet Tart. Think of contrasting flavors when you need to balance or cancel out one very strong flavor, to refresh your palate for the next taste.

Cut the richness. There are two ways to do this with acid or with tannin. Think of rich, fatty flavors as a blanket that lays over your tongue and dulls your ability to taste. Acid works by cutting through the fat, or tearing the blanket. Tannin works by lifting the blanket away from your tongue. Both do wonders to make the food taste better simply by allowing you to taste again and getting the you ready for another bite.

Match geographic location. Local food has developed over time to heighten the flavors of the local wines. Don’t fight it, let it work for you. Drink Italian wine with Italian food. Drink French wine with French food. There is a beautiful simplicity to it. 

However you pair your food and wine, pair your food and wine. Good wine makes your food taste better, good food makes you savor your wine. Every dinner can be a dining experience with the addition of a good glass of wine.

Outside of the news though, I am at odds with Mr. Keen. There is little difference between the record store clerk and an online music blogger, other than the fact that the record store clerk works retail. I typically don’t assume simply because someone works in an industry they know all there is to know about the industry. Hmm… I seem to recall a saying, something to the effect of “Fake it till you make it.” Perhaps employment doesn’t go hand in hand with expertise Mr. Keen.

When it comes to recommendations on purchases most of us turn to friends and family. But when it comes to wine, with so many selections out there folks feel that they need an expert to help them navigate the sea of wine. Hence we end up with the cult of the ratings. Now, the consumer trusts the opinion of Robert Parker more than his own tastes. Just because Parker likes it doesn’t mean than you have to like it. The expert has come to rule the world of wine, with consumers trusting the taste preference of these experts more than their own likes and dislikes. That to me is more twisted than reading a wine blog. 

Cult of the amateur or cult of ratings – which poses the greater evil? One gets people excited about wine and trying new regions and varietals. One makes people feel menial and unsophisticated if they do not like a recommended wine. Seems like a no brainer to me – bring on the amateur!

If you happened to see the Anthony Bourdain Food Porn special last night you may question the sarcasm of the term. Damn – that was hot! And honestly how often do you here the comment, ‘ooh…that is better than sex,’ at the dinner table? It’s really not a stretch to tie up sensual side of food with the sensual nature of, well, sex. It also makes sense that the puritanical sensibility of American society would be scandalized by the immense pleasure that people derive from food.  

Granted Tony Bourdain does cross the line a bit, but honestly would we love him if he didn’t? The cheesy 70s porn was a bit much, but it did prove the point. The scandalous, sexy side of food is obviously still something we feel a little dirty about, otherwise the segment wouldn’t have worked.

Yes, its true that food is sexy but that’s no reason to feel dirty about it. Enjoy the pleasures that food has to offer, hell even lick the spoon. It’s good isn’t it? Good and oh so bad.

I’ll be the first to admit that Italy is my weakness. The organization (or lack thereof, it is Italy after all) of their regions and what grapes are grown where just doesn’t jive with me. This is not to say that I dislike Italian wines. Quite the contrary. I keep a few bottles of Chianti and Barolo around most of the time  - I love to cook Italian foods and still can’t find a better pairing than Italian wines.

I think it is this very fact that keeps me so engaged – that regardless of how little I know I can always learn something just by tasting the wines. Each bottle holds its own lesson about a particular time and place.  What you knew (or didn’t know) before opening that bottle matters very little when it comes to appreciating the wine within.

You don’t need to know all about beer to appreciate a cold one, and I think it’s time that we showed wine the same courtesy. Enjoy each bottle for what it’s worth and if you happen to learn something along the way, well great, but if not you at least enjoyed a great bottle of wine. What else do you need to know?

The wines of Vouvray are all white and made from Chenin Blanc. Your typical Vouvray is made in an off-dry (read – lightly sweet) style with a lovely honey and floral characteristic. These wines often age gracefully for years, and are reasonably priced so a good place to start looking for some older white wines.

The bottle that we had last night was a 1990 Aigle Blanc. Despite it being old enough to vote – the wine still was fresh and smelled of honeysuckle and apricots. This was one of those bottles that I played with the temperature of, serving it at nearly 60 degrees. The warm temperature really showed off the wine’s pretty nose, but it was still cool enough to be refreshing.

Now you may ask what kind of meal warrants a 1990 Vouvray – why grilled cheese and homemade tomato soup of course. Remember, the whites of Vouvray are typically reasonably priced, so you can often find older bottles on the cheap. As whites age they kind of soften up around the edges and lose the crisp focus of their youth. This makes for a nice compliment to a cozy meal like grilled cheese and tomato soup. With a comfy meal, you want a comfy wine. Don’t worry if you can’t find a bottle older than a seventh grader, a younger Vouvray would still give you that warm, fuzzy feeling you’re looking for. Regardless of the vintage pick up a bottle of Vouvray to try with your next comfort meal. Mac and Cheese anyone?

It doesn’t have to be a wine only shop – there are a number of liquor stores with great wine departments. So next time you are at the liquor store don’t brush of the person who comes to ask if you need help. Ask them for a recommendation in your own wine language**. Don’t dress up your request with words you never use just to impress some guy in the wine aisle. Tell him exactly what you are looking for and see how he responds.

Ideally you should get a barrage of questions about your tastes. This will help him translate your wine language and figure out what you’re looking for. At this point he should provide several recommendations in several different price ranges. Pick up one of the recommended bottles and see what you think about it. Remember what you like about it and what you don’t, and tell them about it next time you shop for wine. You need to experiment and play around with lots of different wines to find your taste (I know it sounds like arduous labor, doesn’t it?).

The folks in the wine aisle are your allies in this search. It is their business to know about all of the wines that they sell and take advantage of their knowledge, but you can only get this level of knowledge in a good wine shop. Use the big box stores to stock up on wines that you know and love, and go to your new favorite wine store to find the wines that you love. Yeah, the wines might be a little more expensive there, but remember you are paying for knowledge, expertise, and someone else to taste through all of the wines to find the right one for you.

**I really do mean your own wine language. Talk about the wines as you think of them whether it be with colors, fruits, vegetables, similes, poetry or metaphors. It is up to the wine shop to translate. If they don’t understand your language – find a different wine shop.

How many of you keep the rooms in your house between 60-65 degrees? Not many I would guess, and typically the fridge is a little too chilly for whites. My rule of thumb when it comes to wines is to pop the red and/or pull the white out of the fridge when you start cooking. This way all of your wines will be just right when it comes to temperature. 

Most of us have thrown out the old adage of white with fish and red with meat, so why not follow suit with wine temperature? The warmer a wine is the more you will be able to smell in the wine and vice versa. So if you have a really fragrant white wine that you serve ice cold, yo will be losing out on a lot of the aromatic characteristics of the wine. Same thing works in reverse – a red you don’t particularly like the nose on? Pop it in the fridge and the offending characteristics will fade away.

When do you play with serving temperature? Well when it seems right (easy answer, isn’t it). If it’s really hot outside, serve your red with a little chill. If you are having Fettucini Carbonara on the coldest night of the year, serve your white a little warmer. 

But don’t limit yourself to just the outdoor temperature – think about the meal too. Last night we had a grilled New York with Mediterranean greens (not my best creation, so you won’t find a recipe for this one), and we had a Barbera with a slight chill on it. Now my husband would probably tell you that the chill was because he pulled the bottle from underneath our house right before dinner – but it was actually intentional. The fresh flavors of the greens needed all of the flavors of a big red wine, but muted a bit.

When you are thinking of playing with the temperature here are a few guidelines. Lighter reds typically take the chill better than heavier ones, so don’t go throwing your Petite Sirahs and 90’s Napa Cabs in the fridge for an hour or two. Think Pinot Noir, Gamay, Barbera and even Loire Valley Cabernet Francs – they all play well in the cold. If you want to warm up a white remember acid is key. A really acidic white will end up tasting tart and weirdly tannic if served too warm, whereas a really low acid wine will taste fat and flabby. Viognier is a good candidate, as are French Burgundies. Keep the sweeter wines and the sparkling wines in the fridge and serve those babies ice cold!

For some of these folks the change of scenery to a nice restaurant allows them to relax and enjoy the meals. Usually this is the same subset that has an irrational fear of microplanes and thinks that a great amount of closet space is foregone in favor of in kitchen cabinets. They may not be able to enjoy the art of dining at home, but they get it. 

But there are those that never let themselves take time to enjoy a meal. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with these folks. There is no ordinance that requires that you savor your meals. Heck, I probably spend too much time contemplating herbs, time that could be put to much better use, like saving the world.

But superhero powers aside, I must say that I feel a bit sad for those that don’t get a bit weak in the knees when someone says bacon (or truffle, insert your own culinary Achilles heel here). There can be so much pleasure derived from good food, good wine, and good company. There is little more primal than the need to break bread, and well, the survival of the human race depends on those more primal needs (and that’s another blog). If we have to spend all of this time cooking and eating every day I think we should derive as much pleasure out of it as possible. 

I’ve begun to approach meals at home much the same as dining out. Perhaps it is because I love to cook, or perhaps it is because we live a half an hour drive from the nearest decent restaurant, but I have begun to take a more thoughtful approach to our meals at home. I’ve found that not only does it give my husband and me a chance to reconnect, it makes it easier for us to turn off the tv during dinner and actually connect with each other. Now, what to make for dinner tonight?

Well as dinner prep finished up my thoughts turned to a wine to go with dinner. Naturally I thought white because I was working with a salad, & simply seasoned chicken, not to mention my husband and I are both preferring white wines these days (I blame the unseasonable warm winter we’ve had in CA). Then it came to me – Sauvignon Blanc. Of course – the crisp, grassy qualities of a Sauvignon Blanc would be a perfect complement to the goaty tang of the cheese crumbled over our salads. Success. It was delicious. You can find a rough approximation of a recipe here.  We had a Monterey County Sauvignon Blanc, but region isn’t terribly important. Look for a crisp Sauv Blanc that doesn’t see too much oak.

Several beets, we used red and yellow

Chicken Breasts (one per person)

Goat cheese (any soft cheese will do)

Walnuts

Dried Cranberries

Red Wine and Balsamic Vinegars

Preheat your grill pan (or grill) to medium high heat. Season chicken breast with salt and pepper (I used a little garlic powder as well) and grill until cooked through.

Remove the ribs from the chard and reserve. Put the chard leaves into a pot of heavily salted boiling water. Boil for 3 minutes and drain well and chop roughly. Rough chop the chard stems and the roasted beets.

In the same pot add a tablespoon of olive oil and 1 clove of garlic, minced. Add the chopped chard stems and cook until they begin to soften. Add the chard leaves to the stems and allow to come up to temperature. Meanwhile mix 1 T red wine vinegar, 1 t balsamic vinegar, 1 t olive oil, and a pinch of salt and pepper in a small bowl or a dressing shaker. Pour the dressing over the pan of hot greens. 

Plate it up – dressed greens, topped with beets, crumbled goat cheese, toasted walnuts and dried cranberries. Slice the chicken breast and set it alongside the salad. Pop a bottle of crisp Sauv Blanc and dig in!

Somewhere along the line someone decided that beer, not wine, is the drink of everyman. Unfortunately with this decision it was also decided that wine was fancy, sophisticated and required a trained and specialized palate. So now wine is the noble beverage of the upper crust and beer is what everyone drinks and therefore what you see advertised during the Super Bowl.

Now that is just a load of bs! Wine has no higher status than beer – they are both just alcoholic beverages, plain and simple. There are good wines and bad wines just as there are good beers and bad beers. Much to the chagrin of winemakers, I would say beer is harder to make and requires more skill to make than wine. Regardless, it is just marketing that has set wine out of the reach of everyman, and smart wineries would step off this ridiculous pedestal to sit down on the couch and relax with the rest of us on Super Bowl Sunday.

Recently our relationship has changed.  While I was pregnant with my beautiful baby girl Bacchus and I called it quits. The nice part about not drinking wine for nine months is that it allows you to amass quite a wine cellar. Now that a little bundle of joy has changed my life I’ve realized that Bacchus and I haven’t grown apart after our little break, but we are in a different place. A glass of wine still complements dinner on most nights, but I appreciate it more these days.  Perhaps it comes from being able to have wine again, or perhaps it is that the civility of a glass of wine offsets the undignified nature of being the spit-up rag/bum wiper for a tiny person. All I know is that I love the time I spend at the end of the day enjoying dinner with my family, sipping a glass of wine, and discussing our day. I’m glad to invite Bacchus back into my life, and cherish his embrace!