The Wine Idea

Since my job is essentially to meet and chat with guests  and answer their questions about wine, I have a pretty good idea of what’s on their minds.  What follows are the five questions I field most often, and how I respond to them.

Assigning numerical scores on the 100 point scale has emerged as a standard tool for navigating the complicated world of wine. The intent to simplify may originally have been legitimate and laudable, but we’d argue that numerical scores have become the instruments of a new kind of retail tyranny that’s bad for both consumers and…

Wine has a long history, replete with fact and fancy. Over the centuries, its enthusiasts have wrapped it in a cloud of myths, tropes and what today we call memes. One of the more persistent has to do with what counts as real expertise. Who exactly is the wine connoisseur? In the popular imagination, it’s one who can…

Judging from the questions we field in the Formaggio Kitchen wine corner and what we hear in the classes we regularly conduct (if you haven’t been to one, you’re missing out), the how, what and why of pairing food with wine continues to be a source of uncertainty and not a little anxiety.  My sense is that…

When the exotic beverage known as coffee first appeared in Europe in the second half of the seventeenth century, inns, taverns, alehouses, pubs and caterers of every description were already well-entrenched. There were plenty of places to get a drink, a meal or a snack, although the restaurant as a place offering a menu of…

The first order of business for the Biblical patriarch Noah — once the ark came to rest on Mt. Ararat and he and the fam set their sandals down on dry land once again — was to plant a vineyard. We are not told where the vines for this enterprise may have come from, but as…

TThe first order of business for the Biblical patriarch Noah — once the ark came to rest on Mt. Ararat and he and the fam set their sandals down on dry land once again — was to plant a vineyard. We are not told where the vines for this enterprise may have come from, but…

Wine grape varieties don’t generally send out end of year letters as many families do. But if they did, some of the more interesting would surely be those leaking from the pens of the Sangiovese family — a large and diverse vinous clan with claims to a long and noble history. Some sense of the extreme antiquity…

A few years ago, I visited 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. I didn’t climb its…

The mystery of what exactly constitutes human nature seemed a step closer to solution when, in 1800, a young boy was found living without family or adult supervision in the wilds of the Aveyron in south central France. To contemporary theorists of human behavior, the apparently feral child presented a unique opportunity to observe what an individual who had never been subject to socialization of any…

THIS WEEK IN THE WINE CORNER: Good of you to take time to talk with us here in the Wine Corner, Easter Bunny. Few people know that you’re passionate about wine. We have so many questions for you. EASTER BUNNY: I’m all ears. TWWC: We hear you have an extensive wine cellar in your hutch.…

  Human beings are marvelously equipped to enjoy the vast and detailed spectrum of sensations brought to them by their food and drink. Strange then, that science should maintain that our ability to taste is limited to our powers of detecting a mere five distinct and foundational elements. These are sweet, sour, bitter, salty and the recently designated umami (savory). It’s astonishing that the…