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...
by Ron Kapon
New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta and Los Angeles may be the finalists, but the winner is Las Vegas. There are 120 Master Sommeliers in the world (wine knowledge and blind tastings are part of the rigorous exam). 74 of them live in the USA; 13 of whom work in Las Vegas. There are celebrity chefs who promote their TV shows, books, clothing lines, pizza etc and rarely turn on a stove. I have eliminated the two most prominent examples from this discussion. If you put your name on a restaurant you should be there working at least half the time. There are 76 Wine Spectator Grand Award winning restaurants world-wide and 4 are in Las Vegas; 28 of the 700 Best of Award of Excellence restaurants are also in Las Vegas. Follow along with me as I sliced, diced and slurped my way through five d...
by Jonathon Alsop
Beaujolais hits the trifecta for Old World wine: it's the name of a grape, a wine, and a geographical region in France, all at the same time. Beaujolais the grape goes by other names confusingly -- gamay, for instance; the region is further broken down into regions and neighborhoods like Morgon, Fleurie, Saint Amour and at least a dozen others that would be hard to keep in your head unless you lived there. Beaujolais the wine is famous for essentially two things in the US: a version of itself called "nouveau" -- French for new -- a wine that's made and released the same year within weeks of harvest, and low prices. Really low prices. Order-now-and-save low prices. Very top of the Beaujolais food chain is about $25, the middle or bottom tier of wines in many other more famous French re...
by Marisa Dvari
“Delicate and delicious!” declares the haughty French hostess of a BYOB tasting party for wine professionals in NYC, sipping a wine from Bordeaux. “Especially when you contrast it to the California wine,” she snips, rudely pointing at the award winning Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, standing forlorn on the table in front of me. As a native Californian, such was my crude awakening to the pervasive prejudice against California wines on the East Coast. Many upscale wine stores in the East carry very few California wines, and of those that do, you’d rarely see Napa Valley wines advertised in email newsletters or recommended by the staff. Why this predilection for French wine? One lingering reason may be that it’s hard to beat a millennium of savvy marketing, a branding campaign so st...