The Wine Idea

Why is there something rather than nothing?  Why are you yourself and not someone else?  Where do babies come from? Such good questions! Thanks to all of you who send these, and many like them, to the Wine Corner mailroom every week. They’re potent reminders that from time to time it’s imperative to turn our…

How did particular wines take the shape they did? Some say that the possibilities are necessarily limited by the various atmospheric conditions, soil types and topographies that obtain in the vineyards from which they spring. This is plausible — but only to a point. It’s true that each these environmental factors plays a role in…

Human beings are marvelously equipped to enjoy the broad spectrum of sensations brought to them by their food and drink. Yet, science maintains that taste involves nothing more than a mere five distinct, foundational perceptions. These are sweet, sour, bitter, salty and the recently designated umami (savory). It may be astonishing that the great and…

To judge from the conversations I have with friends, colleagues and Formaggio Kitchen clientèle, something called balance is considered a desirable trait to discover in a wine. It seems reasonable enough, since balance is something we value and try to maintain in many aspects of our lives. We strive to create a healthy work-life balance, eat balanced…

Here in the FKC Wine Corner we’re frequently asked for recommendations and we do our best to respond to them individually and thoughtfully. Often, your queries are routine; sometimes not so much. It’s one thing to suggest a red wine around $20 to serve with your roast chicken at home, quite another to propose something…

What’s the difference between an amateur and a professional?  You might say that the latter is someone who’s paid to practice a given skill, while the former engages in it purely for love of the thing (that’s the etymology of the word, after all), though non-monetary gratification might be a better way to describe it.…

Wine can be high-priced, high-falutin’, even high-minded. But the kind of loftiness that matters most – at least as far as the cultivation of the wine vine is concerned – has a more earthbound, geo-location kind of vibe, involving two commonplace, readily-comprehended concepts: altitude and latitude. That the two make an anagrammatic pair and sound…

  We long ago settled the question of whether cigarettes are bad for you and whether auto seat belts save lives. While nothing seems more obvious now, it wasn’t always the case. When I was coming up, what is now the settled science was still up in the air. Where it would come down no…

In 1888, when Claude Monet moved to Normandy, he was already a skilled painter with an established reputation. His 1872 work entitled Impression, Sunrise moved a Paris art critic to refer to the sketchy, atmospheric style in which it was executed as impressionistic and the movement it inspired as Impressionism. The work marked a departure…

Taste wine for a living and you may find that at some point around the umpteenth bottle, the notes you take begin to look a little repetitive. That such a thing should happen is not really surprising, since wines from similar places with similar profiles will, after accounting for vintage variation, have much in common.…

While other months boast direction and purpose — single-mindedly hustling us from one season to the next each replete with its own bundle of busyness and todos  — August is, by comparison, idle. A slacker and lollygagger among the year’s hard-working weeks, a month low on ambition and energy and accomplishments, August seems to hover…

Wine has been an integral, if not always necessary, element of many of the world’s cuisines for a very long time now. Those intrepid proto-vintners of the Caucasus, the Georgians, assert that they’re working on their 8000th vintage, give or take a happy hour or two.   Evidence exists that the Chinese were in the…