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...
by Rinku Bhattacharya
Wine is new and happening in India at the moment, but Indian food and Wines have individually been as old as civilization. Since wine has not been popular in the sub-continent until the past two decades there have been no established traditions regarding pairing Indian food and wine. Indian food is very complex, so it gets rather difficult to put the wine suggestions on an index-card; hence people have stayed away from evaluating the possibilities. I start writing this with a lot of trepidation, a voice inside me keeps saying, “Don’t go there.” The reason being that it really is difficult to give blanket rules to such an extensive cuisine, but then I keep bumping into that proverbial Riesling and think we need to broaden the bottle. The Rieslings have been a popular staple for a lot...
by Gabrio Tosti
A few nights ago, a customer told me about a client of hers that was raving about a "higher end" Pinot Grigio that he gets in a restaurant in New Jersey. Right away, I said "I'm afraid that might be the Santa Margherita." My customer checked the restaurant's wine list online and found out, sure enough, that the "higher end" pinot grigio was the Santa Margherita, selling for $45. I thought it ironic since they also had the Rosazzo Pinot Grigio, which is a far better product in my opinion, on the list for just $28. As I reflected on this story, I thought about the power of marketing. Santa Margherita spends millions of dollars in advertising and public relations, as do other wineries like Castello Banfi. The budgets for giants like Gallo or Yellow Tail are in the range of tens million dolla...
