In 2004, independent filmmaker and ex-sommelier Jonathan Nossiter administered a grand cru skewering to some of Big Wine’s biggest wigs with his quirky, accusatory documentary Mondovino. In one of the film’s more memorable scenes, Michael Mondavi, son of the late Robert Mondavi, shares his dream of one day making wine on the moon. With a space program…
Final Exam We say adios to America's Test Kitchen with a quiz
If you heard the on-air piece, you know that this is the last wine segment Chris and I will do for America’s Test Kitchen Radio. So it seemed like a good time to see how much Chris has learned over the five years we’ve been a team. In fact, he did quite well, although there were a few answers we disagreed about. If you’ve been a regular listener, you might do even better. The questions follow, and below…
The wine world is in the pink.
Is that a good thing? America's Test Kitchen Radio
When I started writing about wine lo these many years ago, it was something of a struggle to interest readers in pink—rosé—wine. At the time, the only examples most consumers had encountered were marketed as “white zinfandel”or “blush.” These were highly technical wines made on an industrial-scale. A bit of carbonation and sugar was often added and there might be an aromatic grape — like gewurztraminer or muscat — thrown into the mix. By the mid-nineties these wines had taken on a distinctly declassé character—nobody with even a smidgen of pretension to sophistication wanted to be seen drinking them—and with good reason. But, by taking rosé off the table completely, lots of good wine—indeed a whole category— was being ignored, it seemed to me. And if one travelled now and then, one knew that the quality rosé wines of Provence, for example, could be very good. Interest in the Mediterranean diet was just cranking up then—and it was a natural accompaniment to much of it. Well, things have changed. Today pink wine is hot, and the time seems right to interrogate it. What’s out there? How do we organize them? What impact are they having? What do consumers need to know about them? Let’s start with some history. The story of red wine that isn’t really red reaches back to the ancient world. We know from Roman agricultural treatises that landowners…
Given up on red wine? Maybe you’ve been drinking the wrong kind America's Test Kitchen Radio
Every retail wine shop worth its salt ought to be part clinic, a place where problems can be addressed and resolved. In the wine corner at Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge where I work, for example, we spend time showing folks how to use a waiter’s corkscrew to open a bottle of wine safely (and with a…
I’ll clink to that:
On the uses of the toast
THE LAST TIME I SAW Italian actress Virna Lisi she was having a wonderful time vamping it up as a reptilian Queen Catherine de Medici in the 1994 film adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas potboiler La Reine Margot. The photo at left I take to be from her 1965 Hollywood film, How to Murder Your Wife. Together the smile,…
When troubles come America's Test Kitchen Radio
Often the variation that occurs in the same wine from one vintage to another is minor and limited to interesting variations on a theme. A cool spring…a drier than normal summer…a little too much rain in September…each can leave their imprint on a wine. But what happens when conditions are seriously bad? You might think…
Waiter, There’s a rock
(herb, green bean) in my wine! America's Test Kitchen Radio
It’s not easy to translate sensation into words, but sommeliers, retailers, and even winemakers are under constant pressure to do it. Much of the rhetoric that ensues is fanciful and frankly useless, but a handful of terms now seem to have entered what might be called wine’s universal, if unofficial, lexicon—a set of terms most…
Up with Champagne,
down with flutes! America's Test Kitchen Radio
It was the Widow Clicquot (Veuve Clicquot) who around the turn of the 19th century developed several now-standard techniques for making Champagne both reliably sparkling and profitable when produced on a mass scale. And it’s really from this time forward that the heavy-duty marketing of Champagne as an indispensable accompaniment to the good life gets…
In search of the source of originality in wine
We long ago settled the question of whether cigarettes are bad for you and whether seat belts save lives. While nothing seems more obvious now, it wasn’t always the case. When I was growing up in what is now settled science on these topics was still up in the air. Where it would come down no…
Wines that play by their own rules America's Test Kitchen Radio
Chris and I have spoken on air several occasions here about appellation wine—the most prestigious category of wine, wine made according to the rules you might say. On a recent segment we chatted about wine that flaunts the rules. You could call it outlaw wine if you wanted to be dramatic, but perhaps we’d be…
Where English is spoken but only Georgian is drunk Cozy spot in Tbilisi Old Town sources natural wines from peasant vintners
TBILISI, REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA. If the steeply winding, cobble-stoned climb from Tibilisi’s old town up Metekhi Rise leaves you with any breath at all, be prepared for the view from its heights to take it away. Before you a broad swath of this wildly romantic city unrolls like an exotic carpet– from the gracefully curving…
What’s the difference between expensive and inexpensive wine? America's Test Kitchen Radio
We’ve devoted several radio spots to the question of how wine is priced and whether it’s always possible for even experts to accurately guess a wine’s price by taste alone. Recently Chris and I discussed a similar question, one that I know troubles many wine consumers: What factors contribute to making one wine more expensive…