Content about Biotechnology

Since there is a color called “passion pink”, there should be a ”passion green” for folks like Tuscan winemaker Michele Manelli of Salcheto.  Everything about Manelli and Salcheto is green except the color of their wines.

Chile makes some of the world’s best Cabernet Sauvignons, both actually and potentially, and one of its iconic ones is Concha y Toro’s Don Melchor.  Since 1997, Enrique Tirado has been responsible for making Don Melchor, and, like every other winemaker in the world, he is a good son who first gives praise to the virtues of Mother Vineyard, where, as legend and faith have it, every great wi

Sommeliers show off their hand-picked, iPad-based wine lists. Servers jockey to increase the beverage tab. Who cares what the diner really wants to drink?

Recently I met two pros who leave their superior attitude behind the bar and approach food and beverage pairing from the guest’s viewpoint. They instinctively know that “guest” is the Latin root word for hospitality.

Although I prefer seeing the bottle label when I’m my writing tasting notes, blind tastings can be fun for what they tell us about wine regions and categories as well as what they tell us about ourselves as wine writers and critics.

  For those of us in the wine trade who work in and around New York City, this is the Golden Age of Wine.

As a writer specializing in the coverage of wine, food and travel, 2012 afforded me the opportunity to make several reporting trips to Europe, as well as to revisit some American venues.  During the long overnight flights and airport delays, I have had time to reflect on what I have seen and what I have tasted.

For many years now, whenever I see a particular gentleman who is one of the most respected and well-known Master Sommeliers in the country, he quickly gets around to asking me the same question: “What’s new?” Early on, I would always think, “Why is he asking me this? Is this a test to see how smart I am?

In the mid-eighties Paul Prudhomme’s blackened redfish permanently entered the vocabulary of average American restaurant-goers; but since then, you can argue that it is variations of blackened tuna that have become more ubiquitous in restaurants, bars and, no doubt, countless home

 Never has the world produced so many quality wines in so many different countries. Consequently, a beverage director/sommelier has more options to choose from than ever before.

What makes the wines of Chateau Beaucastel so wonderful? I’d tasted these wines occasionally in the U.S. and always came away impressed by their unusual combination of power, elegance, and intoxicating spiciness. While teaching a travel writing class for The Writer’s Workshop in Vaison la Romaine, France I finally got a chance to visit the storied property.

There is a commonality among restaurateurs and winemakers that is crucial to both, but which is sometimes ignored by both – at their own considerable peril.