Whether you’re indulging in shepherd’s pie or dim sum, there’s always a wine to match. But what is it? Check the portable new Drinks Matcher Widget from Natalie MacLean, publisher of Canada’s largest wine e-newsletter. This food-and-wine pairing tool can be downloaded to your desktop, social page, website or blog. Go to www.nataliemaclean.com/matcher. You can search by the food or by the wine, then browse through recipes or drinks reviews. MacLean spent eight years testing the combinations for her Drinks Matcher. “I’m a thoroughly hedonistic researcher,” she says in an email. “Of the thousands of combinations I tried, some were […]
Social Media and Wine
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The Editor’s Pick Look for a perfect pair with sommelier Natalie MacLean’s online Wine and Food Matcher (www.nataliemaclean.com/matcher). Select a food from the expansive list and receive both red and wine wine recommendations. Or choose the wine variety and you’ll get a long list of food suggestions.
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Natalie MacLean is a productive wine writer who also has an active life on the internet. She has just launched a new wine and food matching “widget” for social media. What does this mean? Well, it’s a small piece of code that one can use if one has a blog or a web page. By putting the code on one’s page, one gets a little frame on the page with a food and wine matching tool to help you match the best wine with food. You can discover many things with the widget, sometimes quite amusing. For example, that if […]
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I’m not much of a wine connoisseur I’m afraid. Never have been. It’s simply that I haven’t found a wine that I enjoy the taste of, so when it comes to alcoholic drinks I tend to stick to beer. I enjoy most beer brands on the market today and am not overly fussy about which one I drink, but if given the choice I like to keep it real (and not drink pink drinks!). Anyway, my point is that when it comes to wine I couldn’t tell the difference between a Chardonnay and a Chihuahua. I don’t have a clue […]
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We are just a week away from St. Patrick’s Day – a time for merriment. And a time when many folks like to celebrate by serving a great meal to their friends and family. But pairing just the right wine and food can be tricky. I discovered a great tool that can help you pick the perfect wine to match with your food choice. You can try it out right here! Just start by clicking on the Food or Wine option….and have fun discovering which match will motivate them to do that Irish jig! This Wine and Food Matcher comes […]
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Natalie MacLean, a four-time James Beard Journalism Award winner, recently unveiled a new food and wine pairing tool on her website, Nat Decants. While primarily for wine-lovers, the tool also pairs beer, liquor and coffee. The vast number of foods and beverages in the database make this a useful tool to bookmark for the next time you are planning a special meal or opening a prized bottle.
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Natalie MacLean is a food and wine expert and an all-around good writer. When I have questions about what to drink with a meal, or what’s new on the wine horizon, I usually go to her website. There’s so much information crammed into one site that it’s almost overwhelming. One of the cooler features of the site is her “Drinks Matcher” tool. You choose a food or choose a wine and the matcher will tell you what, well, matches. The level of detail is surprising – Nat includes more than just a few standard meals and a wide variety of […]
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Right now, hanging out on my wine rack, I have a bottle of 2007 Syncline Mourvedre from the Coyote Canyon Vineyard in Horse Heaven Hills, and it’s just begging to be opened. I loved last year’s vintage, so I can’t wait to get at the newest. At the recommendation of Peter Moore from Poco Wine Room, though, it’s going to get even better if I give it a month to open up a bit (it’s still just a baby), so I’ve been sitting on it for about three weeks, going crazy all the while. With all this anticipation, maybe I […]
Green Food & Wine
10 Green Food & Drink Matches for St. Patrick’s Day at NatalieMacLean.com You don’t need the luck o’ the Irish to find great green food and drink pairings this St. Patrick’s Day, according to Natalie MacLean, who offers a new Drinks Matcher widget. “Just look for complementary flavors and textures.” “Green food and green wine go together, so veggies dance with wines that have herbal, grassy aromas, such as New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc,” Natalie adds. “In fact, if there were an award for Veggie Wine of the Century, it would go to this one. Not only does it have complementary […]
Matching Online
Can you suggest wine-pairing Web sites? — Robert B. Moberly Fayetteville, Ark. There are thousands of opinions on what food should be served with what wine. Keep in mind that any pairing is a highly personal suggestion and that the most important pairing advice is that if it tastes good to you, then it’s a good match. We prefer to use books for quick reference, but there are some good Web sites that you should bookmark, too. Wine writer Natalie MacLean keeps a nice database of pairings on her Web site, http://nataliemaclean.com/matcher.
