CENTRAL BOTTLE HAS a real commitment to winemakers who do things the old-fashioned way, who work with traditional materials and methods, who make honest, authentic wine, who shrink from excessive manipulations in the cellar. The shorthand term we use to describe wines like this is ‘natural’, and it’s a useful term . . . …
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For wine drinkers, no right to freely assemble
A dozen years ago my wife and I visited a couple who had renovated a hoary old estate in the Perigord, deep in the Mother Goosiest part of the French southwest. They subsequently fitted out the house and stables as an upscale B&B with fixtures and amenities charming enough to wring tears of joy from…
Wine’s old frenemy
Earlier this year I was on the island of Vulcano, one of a flotilla of small land masses that poke up from the Tyrrhenian Sea off the northeast coast of Sicily. It’s the place that gave European languages the word volcano, and one of four of Italy’s active, above-ground volcanic centers is located here. The…
Beyond swirl, sniff and sip
Drop by the Central Bottle tasting table any Thursday, Friday, or Saturday (or any night at Belly Wine Bar, below) and you’re likely to see a crowd of regulars milling about and repeating a series of gestures that by now must seem perfectly routine — even second nature: pick up a glass holding a couple…
Containing ourselves The ceramic revolution and the invention of moderation
I suppose that when the people I once worked for — Nick, Maureen, David and Liz — were traveling together in Italy and noodling the idea of opening a wineshop together their first concern wasn’t what to call it. But the name they finally settled on — Central Bottle Wine + Provisions – is a particularly apt…
It’s the little things that count
For wine’s chattering classes no subject is more captivating than the elements that make one varietally-similar wine distinguishable from another. Plant a chardonnay vine in the Sierra Foothills of California and another genetically identical vine in the commune of Meursault in Burgundy, let them mature and produce fruit and the wines that result from their…
Shot scares monkey
THE GREAT RUBE GOLDBERG wasn’t an inventor, he was a cartoonist. The insanely clever, laughably complicated chain-of-events machines (string, J, fires pistol, K. Shot scares monkey, L, forcing razor, N, onto egg, O) that are forever linked to his name existed only his imagination and in his drawings. A pity we can’t say the same for the inventors…
Caught looking
THE FELLOW ASSIDUOUSLY OGLING his glass of red wine is a detail from a lithograph that hangs in my office, one of a trio I bought from a shaggy bouquiniste (quayside seller of vintage books, pamphlets, and prints) in Paris long ago. There were around a dozen in a series depicting the pleasures of wine, but…
In love with the Loire
If you love the world of wine, there’s no corner of its territory that’s without interest – not a single one you wouldn’t care to explore if you had the time and the money. A field of vines set in orderly array has the same aesthetic appeal wherever it’s found, yet every vineyard is somehow…
Glass menagerie
Historians of material culture know as new foods, dishes, and ingredients enter a social space they’re often accompanied by new equipment necessary – or at least helpful – to both preparing and serving them graciously. Sugar, coffee, chocolate, and tea all found their way to European and American homes beginning in 18th century, and provided…
What a cup of tea can teach about wine
ALMOST ANYONE who has ever had a frustrating conversation with an over-zealous sommelier or retail clerk knows that wine is bedeviled by jargon: the language peculiar to a given field that insiders use to recognize each other and keep the uninitiated at arm’s length. I suppose I have to admit to being a wine insider, but…
On the social hierarchy of un-white wines
I RECEIVED an email this week from Hamilton Russell Vineyards in South Africa. It told the story of a recent tasting of 31 vintages of their chardonnay, from 1982 t0 2012. The aim was to get an idea of how capable the wine is of medium to long-term aging and to provide some guidance for those who have been buying…