The Wine Idea

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), a claim which places the origins of winemaking in…

I’ve’ve written before about what we like to call the Fog of Wine; the feeling that finding your way in the world of wine is like wandering in a misty landscape where the trail is hard to keep to and waypoints uncertain. I don’t actually believe that in this regard wine is any more difficult…

I remember reading the late Marcella Hazan’s first cookbook in the 1980’s and being taken struck by her confiding that the secret of all savvy cooks is  . . .  water.  She went on to explain how either adding a bit or simmering out a bit would balance flavors and adjust the consistency of a…

Winemaking is simple, but isn’t always easy. From the beginning, crafting sound, durable wine has been a challenging undertaking. The medieval Church was exceptionally good at it because it had (i) heaps of money, (ii) swaths of prime vineyard land (thanks to the pious bequests of expiring nobles eager to endow masses for the repose…

The wine world isn’t unique in prizing expertise; Let’s just say that it does so to an exaggerated degree. Ask someone, just offhand, to associate a subject domain with the word connoisseur, and chances are very good that wine would come out on top, or very near the top, of any list of responses.We generally don’t…

When helping our clientèle choose wine, I typically suggest several options that seem appropriate — at different price points. What typically follows is a conversation about what qualities attend a more expensive candidate versus a less expensive one. Sometimes, a guest will decide to spend a bit more to get a bit more. At other…

From time to time, winemakers will drop by our cellar to present and talk up their wines  We love having an in-person opportunity to ask all kinds of questions about how and why they do things as they do. Of particular interest to us is how a particular wine gets to be the way it…

Millions of wine drinkers rely on tasting notes provided by celebrity critics to direct their wine-buying. I’m not going to argue the advisability of such practice except to note that one of the shortcomings of these reports is the way they actually play out. In a venue where as many as a hundred wines await…

Is this seat taken? No? How lucky for me! Mind if I plop down? Chances are that we’ve met before, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised or offended if my face (if one can call it a face) isn’t familiar. It would have been over another glass of wine; a Côtes du Rhône, likely…

A vigorous world trade in wine had existed for perhaps a thousand years when the western Roman Empire collapsed and cities, key hubs of both mercantile organization and of customers keen for the product, fell into decline and decay. Late classical civilization didn’t disappear utterly, but was dealt a severe blow. As a new order…

We’re not talking about Ball, Teale, Davis or Inman squares here (as you Cambervillians may be thinking). No, this is about conceptual squares and how what we’re calling Next Square Thinking can help you be a savvier, more adventurous wine consumer. I say adventurous, but one of the nice things about NST (as I’ll refer…

The people who work hard everyday to present a positive image of wine and wine culture like to emphasize wine’s ancient lineage and unbroken continuity. The simple process of harvesting grapes and fermenting them into something flush with gastronomic, mood-enhancing and social lubrication skills has been familiar to, and appreciated by, who-knows-how-many generations of grateful…