All posts by Stephen Meuse

SEAN SHESGREEN’S  scholarly paper “Wet Dogs and Gushing Oranges: Winespeak for the New Millenium“ is clever and entertaining enough to have been rejected by any self-respecting peer-reviewed journal. In it the former English professor describes the various ways in which wine writers have sought to describe and categorize wine over the last two centuries (wine-writing…

WE WERE ON A ROAD TRIP recently that took us from New Orleans to St. Augustine, FL and thence up through Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC. It was an eye-opener for me to realize how readily southerners pegged me for someone not like them. It wasn’t just the Boston in my speech apparently, but some…

I WENT OUT ON A LIMB last week trying to come to terms with what quality amounts to in wine – in some cases backing into it by suggesting what quality isn’t.  I inched further out on the same shaky branch when I promised that in a subsequent post I would have a stab at…

THE BELIEF THAT A FORTUITOUSLY-SITED vineyard can consistently produce wines of exceptional quality is at the very root of the notion of cru and appears to reach back to Pharaonic times.  From the medieval era to the mid-twentieth century the English relied upon the reputations of blender-shippers at the port of Bordeaux (above) as a…

THE STERN LOOKING FELLOW at left is Epicurus, a Greek philosopher of the early third century BCE. Considering that his name is linked to a way of life that puts a premium on sensual pleasure you might have expected him to look a bit more cheery, or at least a little fleshier. Granted, his facial…

THE COLLECTION of open wine bottles at left was shot in my kitchen this week.  There are usually four to six there at a time.  All are in the process of being nipped at.  Chances are one or two will make their way to the recycle bin soon – either because they’ve been emptied or…

IN MOVIES OF A CERTAIN KIND (the kind I most like) fog plays a prominent role. I’m thinking of films like The Third Man,  Quai des Brumes, and Brief Encounter.  Fog evokes mystery, doubt, and a vague anxiety  – all lovely things when you’re longing to sink into something noirish. Wine and fog have some…

Former Classics professor Michel Bettane may be the most influential writer on wine in France today. With colleague Thierry Desseauve, he publishes Bettane & Desseauve’s Guide to the Wines of France.  Bettane has emerged as a vocal critic of  those who claim that organic certification is any guarantee of quality and has been particularly strident…

THE COLLECTION of open wine bottles at left was shot in my kitchen this week.  There are usually four to six there at a time.  All are in the process of being nipped at. Chances are one or two will make their way to the recycle bin tonight – either because they’ve been emptied or…

I GET ASKED which alcoholic beverage first passed our greedy little lips – beer or wine. Since it’s not a case of needing to have one before you can have the other, the first-drink problem isn’t as daunting as the chicken/egg conundrum – but it does seem to linger. I don’t think there’s actually much of a contest…

SHOPPING FOR WINE IS THIRSTY WORK, so sipping an ounce or two while you scan the shelves mulling over varietals and vintages can only make an already pleasant task more enjoyable. At least that’s how it seems to us. On Fridays and Saturdays when I’m on the floor at Central Bottle we almost always have…

THE PICTURE ABOVE ISN’T some abstract expressionist art you might encounter in a Soho gallery. It’s a thermal image of a section of the North Atlantic  (Credit: NASA JPL). The warm Gulf Stream [A] appears as a red-orange streak separating the warm Sargasso Sea [B] from the colder continental shelf [C].  Coldest water is bluest; warmest…