by Alder Yarrow
I heard my wife say something unbelievable last week. It just sort of popped out, casually, as we were putting the final touches on a simple Tuesday night pasta dinner. "Honey, I'm worried that we're not buying enough good red wine to lay down for the long term." I nearly dropped my plate. This was the wine lover's equivalent to any number of preposterous fantasies: the sports fan whose wife requests a much bigger TV and matching tattoos of his favorite team; the meat lover's vegan girlfriend who suddenly offers to make prime rib at home; or the oversexed Woody Allen type whose wife suggests they start swinging with supermodels. I'm the luckiest man alive. When we first met, Ruth was simply prepared to humor my interest in wine. She enjoyed a glass now and then, but didn't thin...
by Alder Yarrow
That wine is getting better, for the majority of wine drinkers in the United States, can hardly be denied. By and large this means that the millions of bottles that fall somewhere in the five to ten dollar price range and which are purchased overwhelmingly at supermarkets have seen a noticeable increase in quality over the last decade or two. This increase in quality is manifest both in a larger diversity of wines as well as the essential truth that, on the whole, they taste a lot better. This sea change, which has been accompanied by, and which to a certain extent has been influenced, by an increase in wine consumption, has been made possible through better winemaking technology. This is not to say that this phenomenon exists purely because of better technology, but it could not have h...
by Alder Yarrow
Perhaps the greatest singular pleasure of wine for me, should I ever be held at gunpoint and forced to choose one, would be its near magical ability to taste like something entirely different from grape juice. Yes, I cannot deny the myriad rich conversations that tracked deep into the night supported by many bottles of the stuff, or the new friends I can count as a result of my interest in and writing about wine. I revel in the differences that I can sense in a bottle sampled carefully over the years, changing, shifting, always something new. But when it comes right down to it, tilting back a glass to taste something like the rich, slightly spicy flavor of clover honey is an experience that will never grow old. The aroma of new honey is but one of the infinite dimensions that wine can h...
by Alder Yarrow
The dialogue about wine in popular American culture usually fails to rise above a whisper. This is to say that most people don’t think about it or talk about it at all. For those to whom a conversation with friends about wine might not be the strangest thing in the world, much of the conversation I overhear in cafés and bars continues to reverberate with movie quotes from Sideways, coupled with either genuinely snide or tongue-in-cheek character assassinations of Merlot. Despite what seems to be a growing interest in wine, the majority of American wine consumers don’t bother with the news, intrigues, and current affairs of the world of wine. These good people, bless their hearts, just want to drink their wine and enjoy it. Sometimes, buried neck deep as I am in my stew of RSS fe...
by Alder Yarrow
The bearded man with the diamond rings, who is nearly bursting the seams of his Armani tuxedo, grabs you around the shoulder with one hand and stuffs a wad of cash in your hands with the other, beaming proudly. The beautiful stranger in the midnight blue gown slips off her string of antique pearls and presses a few into your hand with a wink, saying, “let’s cash these in and have some fun tonight.” Even the doorman stopped you for a while on your way in, slyly telling you “I’ve been saving this up for a time like this,” and tossed you a small brick of gold bullion. If you can’t remember the last time something like this happened to you, then it’s been too long since you’ve been to a dinner with a bunch of wine lovers. You’ve forgotten, or perhaps never experienced, h...
by Gabrio Tosti
One of the most common questions I’ve been asked so far is; “what is your favorite?” Whatever the subject is wine, food, movies, color, or clothing my answer is always the same: I really don’t have favorites, but I do have options. On a personal level I don't like limiting my self to just a few choices. I love to choose considering as much information as I can. In the case of wine, the info can came from weather (you might not want to drink a cold Pinot Grigio at the North Pole in December), food, occasion, number of people and so on. Also, I usually never think about my taste because I tend to like or at least to appreciate a wide range of styles. Sometimes the style that I prefer less is the right one with the food that I’m about to eat. For example, I don’t really care f...
by Marisa Dvari
“Irasshaimase!" This traditional Japanese greeting welcomes you to the hip, trendy Pan Asian restaurant of the moment. You are dressed to the nines to fit in with the glam crowd, and at your side is the date or client you’re eager to impress. All is well until your guest suggests ordering sake instead of the wines you know so well. Glancing at the list of unfamiliar names, you begin to panic. Which one? How are they different? And when you do take that first sip, what are some of the characteristics you should be looking for? Just as fine wine is all about the grapes, sake is all about the rice. Premium sake is created from superior sake rice grown in specific regions that give the sake a distinctive fragrance and taste. What differentiates one sake from another and explains oft...
by Jennifer Rosen
The latest study on how we get to be us claims our biggest influence is neither parents not peers, but our siblings. I believe it. When I was growing up, my sister Robin, one year older, was God. My sun, my playmate, my critic and my arbiter of taste, from the moment she first pried the safety cover off my bassinet, removed her diaper, and crapped on my stomach. Naturally, I took her judgments to heart. How often would I get excited about a new song or toy, only to find my enthusiasm crushed beneath the bulldozer of her contempt –“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, you moron!” she’d pronounce. And, oh! the shame! How could I have opened my heart to something so dopey? After a while, you learn to keep it shut. So I sympathize with people afrai...
by Jennifer Rosen
Hey, You! Look in the door of your fridge, or on that cracked tray you call your bar. See that bottle of vermouth? Remember when you opened it? I didn’t think so. Well, it’s time to throw it out. It is not kryptonite, you know, only fortified wine with herbs added. They did this originally to make awful wine palatable. Then, for a while, they decided it was medicinal (The flu, sure, that's what I'm taking it for...) Then the martini was born and for the next eighty-seven years people bought vermouth, opened it and ignored it. But vermouth is not just for leaving out of martinis. Dubonnet straight up may leave me cold, but at a co-op in Spain, I tasted vermouth that blew my socks off. It was a thick, concentrated red wine; tannic, a little sweet and perfumed...
by Jennifer Rosen
Katherine Hepburn was a family friend when I was growing up and now that I’m too big to get in trouble I can say it: I never got her appeal. She’d gab on endlessly about the trials of being a famous actress and I’d think, “Famous, yes. Actress…I don’t know.” Certainly a riveting performer, yet she never stepped out of herself and into another personality, which is what I think of as acting. There are grapes like that. Whether fresh and young or old and delicate, they shout out their unmistakable personality. Riesling and Muscat come to mind. Then there are actors. Craftsmen who bury their egos and disappear into a role for the greater good of the story. You leave the movie thinking, “No way that was her! She’s twenty pounds lighter and has a Ger...
