What a terrific chat with Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Winery in California! Click on the arrow above to watch the video. Listen to Randall’s stories about hosting a funeral for an open casket of corks in NYC’s Grand Central Station, his experiments with adding rocks to wine and why he has a meteor named after him. Discover why his wines are superb, his new project on a very special piece of land and his push for ingredient labeling on wine. Next Sunday, July 30 at 6 pm EST, writer Mark Oldman joins us from New York to chat about […]
Culture & Wit
What is Wine’s Role in Modern Madness? Finding Our Humanity Drop by Drop
Editor’s Note: I wrote this magazine piece on wine and civility two months after 9/11. However, the search for civility in everyday life has more resonance than ever, with the riots in Ferguson, ISIS, Jian Ghomeshi, Gamergate, unfettered consumerism, and the mysogenous micro-aggressions that women face daily on social media. I welcome your thoughts here: never loose your voice. In Vino Civilitatis The trouble with moderation is that it’s hard to get excited about it. Until now. After September 11, moderation seems to be rarer than a California cult cabernet. Finding the moderate and the civilized in everyday life has […]
Plonk Wine Videos Stumble Blindly into Brilliant Insight
In his book How to Love Wine, New York Times wine columnist Eric Asimov observes: “I’m sometimes dismayed that sommeliers confuse their professional training with what consumers need to know to enjoy wine. We don’t need to know whether you can identify wines blind. “Those are just parlor games for professionals. I think that professionals, like sommeliers, need to be able to communicate with the public in a language that they understand and that they find useful.” When I tasted wines blind with Eric at the paper’s headquarters several years ago, he lived those words. The blind tasting was to […]
Men v Women on Wine: The Score v The Story?
• Men stay in their comfort zones; women are more adventurous. • Women shop for communal gatherings, men for themselves. • Men are geared toward impressing, women toward pleasing. • Women buy wine for the short term (sharing), men for the long term (hoarding). • Men buy on the basis of testimonials from experts, women on tips from friends and merchants. • Women order wine by the glass at restaurants; men order bottles. It started back in, well, the Garden of Eden. In the beginning, it was Eve, inquisitive and experimental, who first sampled a “forbidden” fruit. And once she […]
Facebook Live + Vine Oscars: Wine-Loving Sunday Sippers Snacks
This Facebook Live Video Wine Tasting above, we chat about Oscar-worthy wines to drink while watching this year’s Academy Awards.. You can click on the arrow above to play the video. We were joined by guest winemaker, Helen Morrison of Villa Maria to help us get ready for the big show. You’ll find our most recent live video wine tasting here: www.nataliemaclean.com/live We taste every Sunday evening at 6 pm eastern so add us to your calendar and grab a glass of wine. Click on the buttons for “Share” and “Like” on the page above to get notified when we […]
A Fuzzy Vine-acular: 3,000 Descriptors for Drunkenness Makes My Head Spin
By Natalie MacLean Last night’s startling discovery: there are more adjectives for drunkenness than there are Inuit words for snow. And I’m not just talking about being intoxicated or inebriated, or even blotto, blasted or bombed. There are well over 3,000 descriptors—just looking at the list makes me feel tipsy. What’s more interesting is the difference between the words used for men and women, young and old, bodily and behavioural effects—and how expressions vary across cultures and languages to reveal both positive and negative views. I had lots of help researching this subject from friends who came up with a bandwagon […]
Champagne and James Bond: The Spy Who Loved Bollinger and Dom Perignon
James Bond was one of the first action heroes to make wine connoisseurship seem masculine and sexy. (Most of he-man flicks don’t lend themselves to the quiet reflection of wine: try to imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger sipping a silky burgundy to relax after an extended car chase.) In the Bond flick, Die Another Day, 007 is freed after fourteen months of torture in a North Korean prison. The first thing he wants? A shave and a bottle of 1961 Bollinger. In GoldenEye (1995), a female psychiatrist asks him what he does to relax. Bond presses a button on the dashboard of […]
Oscar Movie Wine Pairings: Lincoln, Argo and Les Mis Video
Oscar wine pairings: Argo & Lincoln … Video vine.co/v/bgndDa0YLA3 — NatalieMacLean (@NatalieMacLean) February 24, 2013 Which wines will you be drinking during the Oscars tonight? Got some more pairings to suggest for Lincoln, Argo, Les Miserables, Life of Pi or other movies that are nominated? Which wine to pair with #Oscar nominee Les Miserables? Video vine.co/v/bgnpIEM9WBx — NatalieMacLean (@NatalieMacLean) February 24, 2013 Life of Pi wine pairing … What are you drinking during the Oscars? Video vine.co/v/bgnjvLhQ5ZV — NatalieMacLean (@NatalieMacLean) February 24, 2013
Wine’s Finest Movie Moments: The Award for Best Cabernet in a Supporting Role Goes to …
On Global Morning Live, we chat about how Hollywood’s most memorable characters, from James Bond to Hannibal Lector, have always had a little help from the wine bottle … and help yourself to those I nominate as the best wines in a supporting role for watching the Oscars this year. By Natalie MacLean Although this year’s Oscar-nominated movies have many merits, oenophiles are bitter over the lack of great wine scenes. For example, couldn’t The Wolf of Wall Street show a little class and decant some Chateau Margaux in the midst of all that excess? Leonardo DiCaprio’s last pivotal wine […]
Which Women Shine with Wine in the Movies?
Wine, women and … the movies. As we celebrate the Toronto Film Festival (TIFF 2014), here’s a look at some of the cameo roles that wine and women have played in film as terrific co-stars. In The Seven Year Itch (1955), Marilyn Monroe, moves into a Manhattan apartment above Tom Ewell, a married man whose family has gone to Maine for summer vacation. When the two get together for an innocent glass of champagne, the bottle explodes—and he gets his thumb stuck while trying to stop the overflow. That makes for lots of double-entendres about pent-up pressure and powerful thumbs. […]
