The Wine Idea

the first one does the talkin’. Or so goes the rule we learned as novice readers. It’s why we pronounce ROAD as if it were RODE, and not RAID and why RAID rhymes with TRADE and not . . .  well, you get the picture, I think. We need the rule because of the frequency with which vowels…

Beg pardon. We don’t mean that kind of nouveau riche. Ambitious arrivistes, pretentious parvenus, up-from-nowhere nabobs are the furthest things from our minds this time of year. Rather, we bring our progressive trifocals to bear on our beloved Beaujolais shelf, where we eagerly await and then rejoice to witness the arrival of France’s celebrated first responders: Beaujolais Nouveau, or, occasionally, Primeur. It’s all the same, you see.…

When Harry Met Sally and the now famous line “I’ll have what she’s having” was just getting cultural traction, the Internet was still some nerdy DARPA project hardy anyone knew about. Trillions of Web searches later, we’ve all learned the usefulness of the ‘more like this’ query. Your job is to find just one thing that exactly hits the spot. Once you’ve…

Well, if it isn’t our old friend Heraclitus, come to pay a visit. He’s been hanging around for 2500 years or so now and just refuses to go away. True, it’s not so much the man himself who can’t seem to exit stage right as it is his ideas — or his One Big Idea,…

It may just be my historical imagination run amok (as it tends to do), but I see traces of the momentous struggle between ancient Romans and their German antagonists still drawing breath in the low-level but persistent rivalry between wine drinkers and beer lovers. The crudely binary nature of this contest is daily re-enacted and…

The tiny  Italian wine appellation of Boca shares some important features with elite neighbors a hundred kilometers or so to the south, Barolo and Barbaresco.  Both employ Nebbiolo, a noble and historic varietal that has been important in the Piedmont since Roman times. However, the law requires wines bearing the Boca DOC to include a…

I’ve written elsewhere about the age-old romance between the wine vine and trees, and of the numerous ways in which the two have interacted over the centuries. It’s understandable that this symbiosis goes mostly unnoticed today since vines are no longer trellised on stately elms, as was once common. But trees and vines are still a team. Many wines benefit…

I won’t mention a name. But his story, or at least one part of it, is one I’ve never been able to forget. He was forty, or thereabouts, when bitten by the wine bug in a particularly lethal way. Not content to merely experience or collect wine (he was the beneficiary of a family fortune,…

Wine talk is surely as old as wine itself, or, if not quite, then at least as old as wine whose source could not be taken for granted by the person consuming it.  The moment wine made the leap from something both created and consumed by the same household to an article of commerce, the services…

An American’s first wine encounter while in Europe can elicit surprise. It’s not that Europeans keep the best for themselves — a strangely persistent canard.  Rather, it’s the temperature at which wine is served.  Whites abroad are typically served a little warmer and reds consistently cooler than Americans are used to. Is this just a…

There’s plenty of mystery about what’s mainly responsible for the expression of individual character in wine, but lend an ear to wine’s chattering classes right now, and you would think the matter has been settled once and for all in favor of . . .  soils. In the soil-as-primary-determinant-of-wine-character theory, it’s the mineral content and condition of dirt and rock…

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off was a George and Ira Gershwin hit that made its debut in the 1937 film Shall We Dance?, sung by another incomparable duo, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (watch the scene here). The tune’s lyricsinclude the by now iconic line “You say potato and I say potahto”  — a kind of anthem for couples who can’t seem to agree…