The Wine Idea

    It’s a provocative question but not a facetious one.  The thought came to me while having lunch recently with an old friend who was instrumental in making two once-celebrated Boston area restos destinations for wine enthusiasts — the waterfront’s Anthony’s Pier 4 and Newton’s Pillar House — more than forty years ago. The…

A chat with Julia Hallman, general manager at Formaggio Kitchen Cambridge this week about the shelf talkers that I had been busy rewriting.  The time between taking the old ones down and putting the new ones up gave me a chance to see what the response of our clientele would be to their temporary disappearance.  The…

I was pouring one white and three red Bordeaux at Central Bottle on  a Friday night a few years ago with the idea of playing a little catch-up on a neglected category. I’d noticed that the only attention the little Bordeaux corner got was from French speakers and a few people of – shall we…

I’ll admit to being a little in love with the analytic tool known as the semantic square (aka Boston box).   There’s seduction in the way it gives clarity to certain kinds of ideas one struggles to achieve by other means.  A skillfully designed square is particularly good at illuminating how perceptions shift as you…

“After that we went from one casino to another, not intending to commit any debauchery, but for want of something better to do.”   In the field of playing the field, Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) was a giant who gave his name to generations of comparative midgets – guys who couldn’t pretend to attain the lofty standard he…

I’m often asked to weigh in on the question of which alcoholic beverage first passed our greedy lips – beer or wine.  Since it’s not a case of needing to have one before you can have the other, the first-drink problem isn’t as daunting as the chicken/egg conundrum – but it does seem to linger. I don’t think…

  Question to noted wine expert: “Ever mistaken Burgundy for Bordeaux?” Expert’s answer: “Not since lunch.” Along with Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy may be the most well-known words in the wine world. Even people with no wine experience at all know these names and with good reason.  Each began its wine-obsessed life shortly after the Roman conquest…

From week to week, guests queue up at the Formaggio Kitchen  tasting table to sample a few wines from our shelves, chat about their respective merits and demerits and decide what they might enjoy taking home. It’s a ritual we count on to introduce guests to wines that we think are worthy of their dollar.  After…

Sauvignon blanc is one of the most popular wine grape varieties in the world. French in origin but widely planted elsewhere, wines made from this varietal display a distinctive profile. It’s readily recognizable sensory profile make it a favorite among younger and novice wine drinkers and it makes a handy exemplar when talking about the…

It was American essayist-philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson who first suggested that the mentality that rates order, uniformity, and predictability too highly is not to be trusted.  ”A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” is how he memorably put it. It’s true that a world where everything happens in just the same way every…

Book Review Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of a Plot to Poison the World’s Greatest Wine By Maximillian Potter We know from prison movies that inmates who really ought to be spending their time hatching plots to amend their lives are more likely to use their enforced leisure to meditate new and better…