by Pamela Heiligenthal
I don’t know if you have had the experience of having to return some wine to your local supermarket lately but it seems to fall into two categories. (1) They have the “Wine? You’re trying to return an opened bottle of wine?” I usually reply “Yes, it was corked; so I would like a replacement bottle”. They usually retort with “Of course it was corked; I can see the cork has been pulled out, anyway it’s against the law to give refunds on alcoholic beverages”. If you are lucky you might get the other response (2) “I don’t really know anything about wine; I’m going to have to get a manager”. When the manager arrives they most often take scenario #1 as their position. Now you are back to square one, let’s try this again folks. If the store is lucky enough to have a w...
by Jennifer Rosen
“Cody, honey, you want your sandwich now, or a cookie? Or how about walking up the aisle again? It’s time to stop screaming now, Cody, OK?” The frazzled mom in the row behind me pleads with her toddler, offering choice after choice. Cody, exhausted to a state of mania after hours of transatlantic flight, would clearly benefit from having his choices limited to, “Either you go to sleep this minute or the other passengers will kill you.” I know how Cody feels. I get the same way when confronted by a giant wine list. Although I seldom scream and throw food, still, as it thumps down in front of me, my heart sinks along with the table. Thirty pages of wines I can’t pronounce, fathom or afford, and that’s just the Italian section. If I find this daunting, what’s it ...
by Jennifer Rosen
We're going to veer off the wine path for a moment to address a phenomenon known as Rhum. The stuff has been showing up at my door a lot lately, equipped, like Barbie, with a host of cool accessories: flasks of pure-cane syrup, lime-squeezing gadgets, odd shaped glasses. It comes in the sort of exotic bottles that clog an industrial packing line, wrapped in raffia or leather and stoppered with glass or cork. It practically screams "Important & Artisanal!" But beyond the art and the H, is Rhum any different from plain old rum? To find out, I set off on a research mission armed only with hot butter, a pair of coconut shells and a thousand tiny parasols. The story starts with the sugar cane plant, native to Papua New Guinea. A restless vegetable, it managed to work its way through Asi...
by Jennifer Rosen
You want to be a better skier. You notice that Olympic-level skiers tend to get knee injuries. So, you grab a sledgehammer and pulverize your patella. Does that sound stupid? No stupider than some of the logic surrounding wine. Take, for instance, the “green harvest.” This is a yearly spring event where vineyards lop off up to thirty percent of their crop and leave it on the ground to rot. Why? Well, as any winemaker will tell you, lower yields make better wine. Grapevines are about the only agricultural product that’s routinely tortured. While peas and corn grow lush and leafy-green, grapes are kept miserable. The idea goes way back. Being slightly less necessary than food, grapevines were historically planted in hostile areas where nothing else would gr...
by Jennifer Rosen
You think your life is complicated? Then step, for a moment, into the shoes of Vladimir Putin. You’re running a country of alcoholics. The Russian people drink over four billion bottles of vodka a year - enough to fill a cargo train stretching from Moscow to Yakutsk. To combat this problem, you figure if you raise taxes on booze, not only will your people drink less, but you can use the added revenue to fund anti-binging programs. But something weird happens. Your official distilleries are working at only thirty percent capacity, yet you hear whispers about a mysterious “third shift,” i.e., morning and afternoon for the state and night for themselves. After all, a producer nets only about two rubles from a 120-ruble bottle o...
by Jennifer Rosen
I get the feeling someone put America in a trance and planted the post-hypnotic suggestion: “Switch to Pinot Grigio.” The fastest-growing white in the country, bigger, even, than white zin, PG is in everyone’s glass these days, but no one seems to know why. Typical comments: “I like Pinot Grigio, right? And remind me, why do I like it?” And, “Pinot Grigio…um, it’s something to do with fresh breezes and things growing, I think.” Responsibility for this voodoo goes partly to Italy’s Santa Margherita winery. Paterno Imports fell for the brand in the 1970’s and has built it into the leading imported white by way of, for all I know, subliminal marketing. As for you, do you, should you like it and if so, why? Yes, you should l...
by Jennifer Rosen
The right glass of wine has a strange effect: suddenly the words take control. Tired of marching along in sentences and paragraphs, they go on strike, demanding a chance to join hands, dance around and have fun. It’s a powerful union. What could I do? Do not pronounce Sauvignon Blanc Like it rhymes with ker-bonk, honk or wonk Leave the C in your craw And say Sauvignon Blaw Or just order a glass of white plonk Negoçiant Georges de la Bœuf Bottles Beaujolais bought in the rœuf French to the cœur He’s got mamzelles galœur And a small Pekinese that goes “wœuf.” You’re know you’re a real connoisseur if You’re really and truly quite sure if That grape down in Oz Which they label Shiraz Is a clone of Syrah or of Durif ...
by Jennifer Rosen
Here in Italy, my Catholic friends think impure thoughts, use birth control and don’t truck much with confession. While an American might seek out Our Lady of So What—a church to match his morals—Italians don’t see it as a matter as religious choice, but one of identity. Sure, the Pope might be a loonbag, but he’s our loonbag. Plus, he supplies rules, much beloved in this country where you need a permit to paint a house or mow a lawn. Regulations permeate Italian life like smoke in a bar – passers-by see the cloud, but insiders are too acclimated to notice. Not that anyone follows rules, personally. Laws are necessary for other people. So, apparently, are stultifying layers of ceremonial beaurocracy. Guests at formal dinners have been known to star...
by Jennifer Rosen
The medieval Tuscan hill town of Montalcino is so picturesque you could turn a monkey loose with a camera and sell the results to Hallmark. Terra cotta farmhouses dot vine-planted hills while the valley below is hidden in a wad of cottony mist, punctured only by the occasional church steeple. I’m here with some other journalists to stain my incisors on Brunello, the famous red wine from the perennially cranky Sangiovese grape. Old-style Brunellos had a tendency to be both watery and rough, like hot chocolate made with too much powder. At their best after ten years of aging, they developed a burnished oxblood color and the savory seasoning of bacon and soft car-seat leather. Nowadays, warmer climates, riper grapes, new clones and better farming result in a fruitier style wit...
by Jennifer Rosen
George Dubœuf is known as King of Beaujolais, for regularly rounding up and selling some of some of the regions’ best wines. Now he’s in trouble, fined $38,000 for a crime he swears was not his fault. To understand the pickle he’s in, it helps to get your mind around fundamental differences between the Old World wines of Europe, and the New World wines of basically everywhere else. These are generalizations, but they hold true often enough to be meaningful. I’ll start with the gist. Imagine a door opens and in slinks a Siamese cat. She pours into the room and winds herself gracefully around your leg, her tail curling up toward your knee. You reach down to pet her, but she leaps up on a bookcase, out of reach. So you sit down and wait. Eventually, in her own sweet time, she...
