Posted 02/27/2009 at 05:54 AM by Cathy
If the St. Germain Cocktail were a person, she'd be sweet but not saccharine. She'd be open-minded but not easily influenced. She'd be effervescent but not bubbly. She'd be current and fresh, but she'd be grounded in history.She'd put everyone around her at ease – literally – but she's got starch in her own spine. I've never seen – sorry, tasted – anything like this.It's a simple recipe. Two parts of both St. Germain liqueur and Prosecco, and two to three parts club soda. At first it sounded to ...
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Posted 02/26/2009 at 04:51 AM by Cathy
"Go to Pier 4," someone told me about a year and a half ago. We'd been talking about white Burgundies and, since he – and Anthony's Pier 4 – had been around the wine scene in Boston a lot longer than I had, I asked him what was so special about the place.He didn't say exactly; he thought he was being beguiling, I thought he was being smug and cryptic. He suggested only that I slip the sommelier 20 bucks and ask him to plan my meal around the Burgundies from the 1960s.Old school white Burgundies ...
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Posted 02/24/2009 at 12:56 PM by Cathy
It wasn't a Big Night.I didn't have guests for dinner.I didn't even have a plan for what to eat.I opened the wine first, and thought about it.The wine – 2007 Villa Wolf Rosé de Pinot Noir, produced by Ernst Loosen of Germany – was refreshing.I'll have vegetables, I thought.I took another sip. The wine was more down-to-earth than fancy-schmancy. I chopped some sweet potato and shallot.Another sip. The wine wasn't complex or elegant or elaborate. I reached for the basic olive oil (not the specialt ...
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Posted 02/22/2009 at 01:45 PM by Cathy
To see these images, click Photo Essay at the top of this page, then "Napa in February." ...
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Posted 02/21/2009 at 05:36 AM by Cathy
The folks I know at the Napa Valley Vintners are realists.The purpose of NVV, a non-profit trade association representing some 350 wineries, is of course to promote Napa wines but it is also to gauge market forces around the world that affect the sale and consumption of wine. Which means the mood going into this week-end's Premiere Napa Valley (PNV) barrel-tasting and auction was cautious at best.They almost needn't have worried.Because, in Napa, the best Cabs are still the best Cabs: Shafer is ...
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Posted 02/20/2009 at 09:25 PM by Cathy
I'm all alone here.I am, literally, the only person from the state of Massachusetts attending the Symposium for Wine Writers in Napa this week.Tennessee is better represented at the Symposium than Massachusetts. Nashville is better represented than Boston.What does that say about the seventh-largest wine-consuming market in the country?It isn't that consumers and Massachusetts residents are uninterested in wine communication, and it isn't that Boston has any lack of very good writers on wine.So ...
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Posted 02/19/2009 at 07:59 PM by Cathy
It was an impressive sight.Twelve wine glasses were set at each of 30 seats in the Woodside Room at Meadowood Napa Valley.Each glass – some 360 of them – contained 2-ounce pours of red wine. Each glass was also topped by a thin white coaster, in order to "hold down" the aroma of the wine. (Putting the palm of your hand over the glass achieves roughly the same goal.)What was equally impressive, in an oddly inverse way, was that the wine in all but one of the glasses smelled absolutely awful. But ...
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Posted 02/18/2009 at 07:55 PM by Cathy
[Note: This article ran in today's Gloucester Daily Times.]Go to the store. Buy a bottle of wine.Sounds easy, doesn't it?In theory, yes. But tease those directives just a little, and before you know it your two declarative sentences have morphed into a dozen interrogatory ones.What kind of store do you go to? Grocery? Liquor? Or supermarket? Do you buy a 750-ml bottle? A four-liter box? Or a 375-ml half-bottle? Is it sparkling wine you're looking for? Or still? Red? Or white? Dry? Or sweet?The v ...
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Posted 02/16/2009 at 05:46 PM by Cathy
You may have noticed that, for the entire existence of 365daysofwine.com, we have never run a tasting note or a rating of a wine or a score. There is a reason for that, namely, that the purpose of this site is not to critique wines numerically or according to some predetermined code. The purpose of the site is to chronicle the wine scene in Boston on a very regular basis, with the goal (selfishly) of educating my palate and (not so selfishly) of sharing the experiences publicly in a way that is ...
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Posted 02/15/2009 at 02:42 PM by Cathy
Conscientious writers know that a character in a story doesn't necessarily have to be a person. A character could be a place, or a weather event, or a glass slipper, or any number of things that have a direct bearing on the way the story proceeds.When I write about wine it's easy for the bottle of wine to be the character, and often it is. I write about the wine's personality, its character, its body, its smell, its impact, even – in my more effusive moments – the consequence of its existence.Bu ...
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Posted 02/12/2009 at 09:39 PM by Cathy
By Beth O'BrienIn these uncertain economic times the notion that drinking great wine and noshing on fabulous food is actually an economizing measure may seem counterintuitive. But that was exactly the message imparted by Rui Abecassis of Portugal's Jose Maria da Fonseca (JMF) Winery at a food and wine pairing hosted Monday evening by the always hospitable Gordon's Fine Wine and Culinary Center in Waltham.Rui reintroduced us to the wines of Portugal with some help from Atasca, Cambridge's much- ...
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Posted 02/11/2009 at 02:49 PM by Cathy
[Note: This article ran in today's Gloucester Daily Times.]Some people went to the 14th annual Taste of Magnolia event last Friday evening to spend time with their neighbors.Some went to support the Magnolia Library Center.Others went for the food and drinks.Most people, however, went for all of those reasons combined."We're here gabbing, catching up," said Lynn McKenna, who has attended every Taste event at the Magnolia Library Center since she moved to the town in 2001. "It's like the lost art ...
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Posted 02/10/2009 at 09:39 PM by Cathy
By Beth O'BrienIn these uncertain economic times the notion that drinking great wine and noshing on fabulous food is actually an economizing measure may seem counterintuitive. But that was exactly the message imparted by Rui Abecassis of Portugal's Jose Maria da Fonseca (JMF) Winery at a food and wine pairing hosted Monday evening by the always hospitable Gordon's Fine Wine and Culinary Center in Waltham.Rui reintroduced us to the wines of Portugal with some help from Atasca, Cambridge's much- ...
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Posted 02/09/2009 at 10:34 AM by Cathy
By Ada BrunsteinOn a frigid February night in downtown Boston, 200 people gathered at the Bulthaup Showroom to sample wines from a region that rarely sees snow. It's also a region that, according to wine importer Richard Shaffer, is a hidden treasure of the wine world. Israel.This was the second wine tasting to be sponsored by the Israeli Consulate of New England in an effort to reveal Israel's ample offerings. Shaffer, who runs Israeli Wine Direct LLC, helped organize the evening, and in his in ...
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Posted 02/07/2009 at 07:16 PM by Cathy
1. Say you go to one of those Saturday afternoon tastings, where sips of various wines are poured and guests either murmur (noncommittally) or nod their heads yes (agreeably) or exclaim (enthusiastically) to their neighbor, "You have got to try this..." When people are doing much of the latter – as they were at this afternoon's tasting at the Brookline Liquor Mart – you know something's up. What was up today was Still River Winery's apple ice wine, which is somehow like wine (it's a fermented be ...
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Posted 02/06/2009 at 09:19 PM by Cathy
By Beth O'BrienMost of us already recognize Boston as a city passionate and knowledgeable about wine. However the Boston Harbor Hotel's 20th annual Wine Festival should be proof positive for even the most skeptical that Boston has truly arrived as a world class wine city.The Wine Festival, not incidentally the country's longest-running, is a nearly four-month marathon of wine and food pairing events covering virtually every grape variety from vintners across the globe. Events range from pairings ...
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Posted 02/04/2009 at 11:38 AM by Cathy
Note: This article ran in today's Gloucester Daily Times.Valentine's Day is upon us and, sorry to say, those (overpriced) roses and that (clichéd) drugstore greeting card are just not going to cut it anymore. It's time to update your gift giving. The bad news is that the economic downturn doesn't leave many of us with a whole lot of extra cash, so "updating" your gift giving simply cannot mean "upping" the price tag of the gift. The good news is that the economic downturn has required all of us ...
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Posted 02/01/2009 at 09:50 PM by Cathy
I did it on a dare.I bought a carton – yes, a carton – of wine at Crosby's Marketplace, my local grocery store in Manchester-by-the-Sea. It's a 2005 Merlot called French Rabbit. And instead of calling it a carton I should properly be calling it a Tetra Pak. But I'm still getting used to the idea...It looks friendly enough, with its two-tone orange-fuchsia packaging and its bunny rabbit hopping across the front. It's even informative. Tetra Pak is recyclable, I learned from the label. It should be ...
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