As a devout and opinionated wine and food person, I certainly have a point of view on my approach towards pairing wine and food in a way that maximizes your pleasure, enables you freedom and flexibility, minimizes any prescriptive ‘must dos/haves’, and allows for a simple approach which can be easily replicated once you learn the system- ahh, to do that, you should read my books (forgive the shameless propaganda).

With that framework explained, bottomed line is I base my thinking on the metrics of a given wine’s structure (sweetness, sourness, tannin, oak, and alcohol) and understanding how a wine’s unique DNA of those five elements lends itself towards food. I call the simple process ‘wine mapping’. Food, of course, has its own prioritization of key elements/ingredients, methods of cooking/preparation, and accompanying sauces/condiments. Personality filled side dishes. Once you understand which of those priorities is the ‘alpha male’ of the dish, matching a wine to that priority becomes the goal. In theory, straightforward but in practice, a question of exactly that- mega practice coupled with experience and…guidance. Continue reading »

I apologize for the long delay since my last blog posting but I have been on the road for a spat and much of it in South America doing research for my next book, an essential guide to South American wines. The first of two trips this year took me to Argentina’s Mendoza and multiple areas in Chile. There was so much to be excited about on both sides of the Andes that it is difficult to single out one sub-region or a singular varietal. What was perhaps most compelling to me as I went through my reams of notes was the sheer wealth of female winemaking talent that I encountered in Chile.

Continue reading »

Call me a prude, conservative, right of Rick Santorum when it comes to wine, but there are certain things one simply doesn’t do. Naked wine, depending on the wine, is often sublime. Many cultivars don’t require much to show them off and indeed when they are over made, they are, in my humble opinion, less interesting. Case in point—most all aromatic white wines (Riesling, Albariño, Grüner Veltliner, Torrontés, etc.) want to be pure and unadulterated examples of themselves. Even some reds can show wonderfully left alone (Grenache, Dolcetto, and Gamay for example).  Add a little oak- fine. Blend with other grapes- fine. But add cream? Continue reading »

This past summer I had the pleasure of spending a couple of days in the town of Jerez in the sun-drenched southwestern Spanish region of Andalusia. Forget the fact that I love sherry, that Andalusian hospitality is supreme (where else in Spain do your receive a free tapa with any beverage (beer or wine) at a bar?!), and the people as warm as the climate in August. The time spent was, beyond the immediate family, in the company of the charming and charismatic Beltran Domecq, the ‘last’ of the wine producing Domecq clan that gave us sublime sherries, forever before being sold and subsequently made redundant at the bodega that they birthed- a modern day tragedy played out so often in today’s quick paced and profit conscious world. Continue reading »

I say American wine, you say…California. And well you should as the Golden State does represent almost nine out of every 10 bottles of wine made in the USA. But if I ask you to think beyond the obvious, most will reflex respond the Pacific Northwest (Oregon and Washington), then likely NY state, and from there some will say Virginia and others likely Texas. The fact of the matter is that all 50 states do indeed make and sell wine commercially in America and many are making better and better wines all the time. Add into the mix that increasingly good bottles are emanating from Canada (the Okanagan Valley and greater Niagara area of Ontario) and Mexico (hello Guadalupe Valley) and it’s easy to understand the excitement surrounding the North American industry. Continue reading »

Recently, I was having a heated discussion with a foodie friend who is a self-anointed gourmand of the highest order. He loves to eat, eat with zeal, and embraces copiousness! We agree on many things but the subject of when less is more came into play and we had major disagreement. The difference of opinion centered on highly coveted foods and how they are best implemented in dishes. While there were some elements that we agreed on (great osetra and beluga caviar for example—never too much!), there are others where we were divergent. Continue reading »

It was with great interest that I read an article from the Wall Street Journal touting Japan’s recent eclipsing of France as the king of Michelin three-star restaurants. It has been percolating for some time and this year the Japanese surpassed ‘les Français’ with 29 such establishments in comparison to France’s 25 in the new 2012 publication.

According to the article’s authors, Mariko Sanchanata (Japan), Katy McLaughlin (LA), and Max Colchester (Paris) this news has sparked great controversy within the international culinary community with scores of culinarians weighing in. The just published 2012 edition rated a dozen restaurants in the Kansai region, the bastion of Japanese cuisine that encompasses Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe, and in doing so gives the three-city zone more three-star ratings than any place on the planet, ahead of Tokyo’s 11, Paris’s 10 and New York’s five. WOW? Continue reading »

I was lucky to be in Europe on holiday a few weeks back, Paris and Madrid, bookending a lovely and delish ten days in Andalusia’s Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada, and, of course, Jerez. While I cringe at the thoughts of my soon-to-arrive credit card bills, the trip was well worth it on so many levels. The experiences, the family time, the food and within the food….the cheese. I am a sucker for all cheeses from cows, sheep, goats, water buffaloes and any mixes of same. Hard or soft, fresh or aged, washed rinds or blues, they all make me swoon. High on my bucket list is a cheese trip through Western Europe with wine as the sideline and not vice versa. In the meantime, I will comfort myself in knowing that there’s a lot that you can get close to home—in your store and increasingly on your local cheese maker trail. And you don’t need to be in Europe to partake. Continue reading »

Sometimes I have a very hard time believing what I read. It might be the sheer inanity of the headlines of a supermarket tabloid staring me in the face as I wait to pay for my groceries. Or it could be the taglines rolling by on the bottom of the screen on some of the networks. And of course we all know that every assertion made on the internet is true, right? But among the worst is picking up a journal from your own profession, eyeballing a quoted study, and then really scratching your head. Case in point follows. Continue reading »

Even though I am a wine guy at heart, I come from the restaurant biz and have great empathy for my friends in that industry. The hours are long, the margins razor thin, and competition abounds. It’s a labor of love as few strike it rich or end up with a line of pots and pans, a show on the food network, and a fat 401K.

Enter Groupon, Blackboard Eats, and other such services that are becoming increasingly commonplace as a recent SF Chronicles article attests. Continue reading »