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 […]
Taste Wine
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 […]
Wine Tastings
Several years ago I organized a wine tasting night, hoping to take advantage of my neighbor’s expertise in that area. Everyone brought a bottle of red wine, each one wrapped in a brown paper bag so we could taste without being influenced by the label or price. The least expensive bottle on the table, a California Zinfandel, won raves. It surprised those of us who splurged on a $20 bottle – about twice the price of the winner – thinking that more expensive meant better quality. That’s only one of a few good reasons wine tastings exist. Milwaukee native Michael […]
Internet & Wine 3
As my close friends know painfully well, I’m not exactly good at making decisions. At the wine store, I’m the customer who gets asked “Can I help you?” twice by the same salesperson because I’ve meandered between shelves for so long that they have forgotten our first encounter. Then I usually say something brilliant like, “Can you help me find a red wine that tastes…you know, tasty…um, like the one I bought a few weeks ago…I think it was French…?” It’s not that I’m a complete oeno-idiot. I know most of the major regions and varietals, and my palate can […]
Internet & Wine 2
As the kids go back to school and newly arrived overseas students crowd into Haidian, there’s a buzz of learning is in the air. As the Beijing wine world continues to expand, more and more Beijingers want to learn something about the pleasures of the grape. Just as a course in music appreciation can help you sort what’s Baroque from what’s not, a bit of wine knowledge makes it easier to tell your Cabernet Sauvignon from Cabernet Franc or, as you advance into the murky world of wine labels, your Pouilly-Fumé from Pouilly-Fuissé. Here in Beijing, probably the easiest way […]
Internet & Wine
Lucky for me, Red, White and Drunk All Over by Natalie MacLean was one of the first books I picked up when I started thinking about doing a wine blog. For MacLean, writing about wine is not an academic exercise, a parsing of the chemical responses upon the tongue, a conjugation of fruit groups or a diagram of geographical factors. Important though they are to figuring out how and why certain flavors and aromas play out on the senses, those elements alone are a flat description of a particular wine’s character. As MacLean explains in the chapter “The Making of […]
Corked Wine
Corked doesn’t refer to bits of cork floating in your wine glass. Natural corks, made from the bark of cork trees grown in Spain and Portugal, can contain a chemical compound called “2, 4, 6 trichloranisole” or TCA. The wine interacts with TCA to create the taint and it’s estimated that 5-10% of natural corks are faulty this way, though that’s improving with more careful practices and better technology. Even a mild case of taint from natural corks strips wine of its expressive aromas and a severe one makes it smell like moldy cardboard. This defect is why screwcaps are […]
Food & Wine
Dinner with wine used to be simple. The rule was white wine with white meat and red wine with red meat. But most of us don’t just eat meat and potatoes or drink claret and chablis these days. With modern fusion cuisine and wines from new regions around the world, the choices – and confusion – are great. One new school of thought is that any wine goes with any dish. However, most of us don’t put ketchup on our ice cream for the same reason as we don’t drink a delicate white wine with a hearty meat dish or […]
Wine Tasting Party
In my book, seven friends come over to my home and we have an informal wine tasting. It’s a great excuse to get together and chat about the wines and, as the evening progresses, life in general. You don’t need to be a wine expert to host a tasting, just as you don’t need to have a doctorate in English literature to organize a book club. In fact, wine tastings work well for book clubs too, especially if you’re discussing a book such as Red, White, and Drunk All Over. I’ve posted lots of low-cost wines in the Wine Picks […]
Food & Wine 5
Of 11 wines on the tasting table, the Col d’Orcia Rosso di Montalcino, a full-bodied, fruity Tuscan red, was Tom Natan’s top choice. Adam Manson hated it. Both have well-trained and -respected palates. Natan is a partner in the Washington-based importer and retailer First Vine. Manson is a co-owner of Veritas, a popular wine bar in Dupont Circle. But the physiological differences in their tongues, coupled with their varied experiences, mean that the same wine tastes different to each of them. To Natan, the big, juicy flavors are luscious. To Manson, they are overwhelming, even bitter. Neither one is right […]
