Natalie MacLean first had the idea to write about wine on a seemingly innocuous trip to the grocery store back in 1999. Groggy and sleep-deprived — she was on maternity leave at the time — she picked up a local food magazine and started flipping through it. That’s when it hit her. “They had all this beautiful food photography, recipes and so on, but no wine,” MacLean told CityLine.ca in a recent phone interview from her home in Ottawa. “I thought, well, I’ve taken a sommelier course. I know about the Internet, so I pitched them a story about wine […]
Month: March 2011
Internet & Wine 4
Excerpted from The Oregonian Uncork these wine Web sites for fun, useful info I recently received a press release extolling the new wine-matching function at Epicurious.com, the culinary Web portal for magazines such as Bon Appétit and Gourmet. Intrigued, I checked out the site. Lo and behold, there they were: long lists of specific wine recommendations, powered by the new wine site snooth.com. I found this function fascinating. And pretty much useless. Click on one of the suggested recipes — Grilled Fish Tostadas With Pineapple-Jícama Salsa, for example — and you’ll pull up wine suggestions such as: “Peter Brum Liebfraumilch […]
Chardonnay: California
California chardonnays apparently have a wicked identity crisis. For the last few seasons, they’ve drawn plenty of criticism for being either too big and blowsy, or way too skinny and vacuous. You’re left wondering what is the real face of chardonnay, which remains, still, the most popular wine variety in the United States. But even knowing of this white grape’s multiple personalities, I was still caught off-guard during a recent, disappointing tasting of just-released California chardonnays from the 2007 and 2008 vintages. Only the 2007 Chateau St. Jean Belle Terre Vineyard chardonnay stood out. This wine smelled, tasted and looked […]
Mobile Wine Apps 1
A Magnum-Sized Resume Natalie MacLean is more than just an accredited sommelier; she’s a wine writer, speaker, wine judge, and publisher of one of the largest wine newsletters on the Internet. “I’ve been writing about wine for 10 years,” says MacLean, “I love the ‘research’ aspect of my job and am very thorough about it.” She’s good at it, too. Her book, Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass, was named Best Wine Book in the English Language at the Gourmand Cookbook Awards. It also won the Culinary Literary Book Award in the Cordon […]
Mobile Wine Apps
Excerpted from the New York Times Shopping for wine is a lot like parenting a teenager. You feel stupid when you’re in the middle of it, and when you finally emerge, you’re desperately ready for a drink. There is, alas, no app for raising teenagers. But mobile software developers have begun aiming at oenophiles, and in so doing, they have established one of the more useful categories of wireless apps. Appropriately enough, choosing the right one can be puzzling and tedious. Some of the refined entries in the current vintage include Cor.kz ($4), Wine Enthusiast Guide ($5), Nat Decants Food […]
Louis Roederer Awards
Decanter contributors were lauded for their efforts at the 2009 Louis Roederer International Wine Writers’ Awards in London last night. Margaret Rand, a previous winner of Roederer’s Champagne Writer of the Year, was named Feature Writer of the Year for her articles in Decanter, and specialist wine photographer Jon Wyand was given the Artistry of Wine Award. Tom Stevenson, the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) Regional Chair for Champagne, won the Champagne Writer of the Year while Decanter contributor Tim Atkin MW won the Wine Columnist of the Year Award for his pieces in The Observer, Intelligent Life and Off […]
Food & Wine 23
As mobile phone applications, RSS Feeds and websites become more sophisticated, food lovers no longer need to scan cookery books for inspiration for their evening meal. When four American University students set up a recipe-sharing website in 1997, their motivation was anthropological rather than commercial. However, within ten years their website, designed to explore how people share recipes, had grown into one of the world’s biggest food websites – allrecipes.com. According to vice president of marketing, Esmee Williams, it was people at home rather than web entrepeneurs, who made this site a success. “We just created the technology,” she explains. […]
Food & Wine 22
Excerpted from The Guardian Need to find a wine to match the meal you’re about to eat? When you’re at home, it’s easy. Check out what’s in the fridge, or on the rack next to the bread bin. If there is more than one bottle in either place, use your common sense. If you only have the one bottle, your choice becomes simple. OK, some partnerships are universally acknowledged as perfect. Sauternes and Roquefort cheese is the one that always springs to my mind; for others it is oysters and either Muscadet or Chablis. These are the exceptions. Most food […]
Wine Books
Updated with more lists from you, our dear readers! We got a deluge of entries for our summer giveaway and as promised we’re posting some of our favorite entries. We’re hoping that some of these entries spark you to add a few more books to your summer reading list. We’ll add a few more of your summer reading lists tomorrow and announce the winner of our summer grab bag. Without further ado: Sharon made us laugh with her entry. 1. Honey I’ve Wrecked The Kids by Alyson Schafer 2. Red, White and Drunk All Over by Natalie Maclean 3. Twilight […]
Ordering Wine
OK, so you don’t know a box wine from a baby brunello and that big dinner with colleagues/clients/current object of obsession is just a day away. You want to be dining and wining but will likely be dining and whining … especially if all you can say to the waiter is, “Got any wine coolers?” You could sign up for Wine Appreciation 101, but frankly, who has the time? Enter your friend, The Faker, who called on Tribune wine critic Bill Daley for his cheat sheet on pro-style ordering. Follow his script, look like you know your way around a […]
