In our second video chat below, sommelier Mike Pierce gets into some specific and fun snack food and wine pairings. There were some surprising insights (really) as I thought all snacks would go best with sweet wines … Skittles proved me wrong, though I loved the Cracker Jacks pairing best. Have you discovered an unusually [...]

Anyone can pair filet mignon and cabernet sauvignon. But how about a bag of Doritos or a Snickers bar? Should you even try? Mike Pierce, sommelier and co-owner of San Francisco’s Maverick wine bar. says yes. In the video chat below, he shares his tips on how to find delicious shabby-chic combos. Why do we [...]

Something a bit scary happens when Halloween falls on a weekend: The one night a year when kids have carte blanche in the sugar department somehow turns into party time for parents. Every year, we help ourselves to our offspring’s trick-or-treating haul (it’s nothing short of our due, really), but we don’t usually wash down [...]

Some wines are definitely a better fit with certain foods, but I admit I lived many years without realizing just good a food and wine pairing could acutally be. On my one and only visit to Lumiere – during the Rob Feenie years – I ordered a ten-course tasting menu and the matched flight of [...]

Students can enjoy wine at mealtimes without having to shell out big bucks, said Natalie MacLean, an accredited sommelier and author of Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass. “Wine is an ideal way to dress up all sorts of dishes that are fairly straightforward,” she said. “It’s like [...]

“It was a warm, breezy July evening and we were with good friends whom we’ve known for 15 years. It was an informal get-together and I love those because we can bring wine. “We started with gourmet potato chips while the grill was heating up, and we opened a bottle of bubbly from Spain. I [...]

Oh man, are the Traveling Mamas big fans of wine writer Natalie MacLean. She’s a funny and informative writer, a four-time winner of the James Beard Journalism Awards, and she also was named the World’s Best Drink Writer at the World Food Media Awards (that’s just about the best name for an award). Natalie MacLean [...]

Why did the chicken flee screaming across the road? It might’ve been escaping the dinner-party host trying to fry him and serve him with, yawn, a bottle of chardonnay. Matching vino and vittles for your next bash doesn’t have to be a “Wine for Dummies” affair relying on tried-and-tired combos (steak with Merlot, fish and [...]