Posted 05/31/2008 at 07:00 PM by Cathy
I'd known for weeks that I'd be participating in WGBH's live art and wine auction tonight. I'm ultra familiar with the station's wine inventory, parts of which they auction off twice a year (usually) to raise funds for programming. And some good friends gave me tips about appearing on camera: wear nothing black, nothing white, nothing patterned – what's left in a closet after that?? – and "do what you do."What I do, of course, is write about wine in Boston so I was somewhat disappointed when I a ...
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Posted 05/30/2008 at 01:43 PM by Cathy
There is no apostrophe before the "s" in Rockefellas, the way there is no exclamation point on a STOP sign or no apologetic punctuation at the bottom of a street sign that says WRONG WAY. It would make sense for it to be there – the context, the rules of grammar, and Emily Post practically beg for it – but reality stops just a bit short.It's been like that for me lately with aromatic white wines: I'm right in tune with them at the get-go (I fall very easily for a lovely bouquet) but the wines th ...
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Posted 05/29/2008 at 09:54 PM by Cathy
Note: Jonathan Tagliani's answers to our questions, below, reflect his personal opinions and are not necessarily those of Martignetti's.Please give me your wine biography. That is, how did you catch the bug? How did you grow in the business to your current position of Fine Wine Specialist with Martignetti?I was working in the financial services industry back in 1992, and I realized I probably needed to pick up some wine to have around for the holidays. I was living in Boston and I went to my loc ...
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Posted 05/28/2008 at 09:49 PM by Cathy
Guidebooks are so passé. The paper version of them, anyway.What's a tech-savvy wine lover to do in a new city, with no tips for wine bars and no local friends to call to get them?There could be only one answer.Google.Or, in this case, 46645 (the numbers that correspond to g-o-o-g-l on the phone's key pad). That's the number I used to send this text message when I stepped off the plane this afternoon: wine Jacksonville FL.In about eight seconds I had three local listings, complete with address an ...
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Posted 05/27/2008 at 06:19 PM by Cathy
A "split" of sparkling wine is one-quarter the size of a regular bottle of wine. That's a nice, transportable size when you would like something celebratory but don't want to lug a full-size bottle of Champagne to the top of, say, Mount Washington.The weather being what it is these days, with summertime plans taking shape before our eyes, we explored some options in the splits of sparkling wine category. Just in case we feel compelled to hike Mount Washington, we want to be prepared.A split (187 ...
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Posted 05/26/2008 at 09:04 PM by Cathy
A few weeks ago we wrote about alfresco sipping at Coolidge Point in Manchester-by-the-Sea. Coolidge Point won our vote as "THE perfect springtime hide-out for daytime picnics, casual carousing, and sips of a bright, fresh, fruity wine that's light enough for a pleasurable (not impossible) return to productive behavior later on."Back then we suggested a Riesling or an Albariño but today, during a Memorial Day picnic at Coolidge Point, we tried a white wine from the Rhône Valley, a 2005 Condrieu ...
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Posted 05/25/2008 at 04:07 PM by Cathy
I'm generally of the mind that it's tough to make a mistake when it comes to wine and food pairings. Are there time-tested guidelines for certain wines that pair exceptionally well with certain foods? Absolutely. Are there also some unexpected, against-the-grain combinations that strike your fancy anyway? You bet. (Red Wine with Fish, anyone?) By and large, if you like what you're eating and you like what you're drinking, you'll survive. Trust me.Once in a while, though, I come across a pairing ...
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Posted 05/24/2008 at 06:38 PM by Cathy
Jeffrey Roberts, author of The Atlas of American Artisan Cheese, toys around with the the idea of drinking beer with cheese rather than wine. Why? Both wine and cheese have tannis, Roberts said, and in his opinion they tend to duke it out for taste priority. Beer's tannin-less composition, on the other hand, cuts the fattiness of the cheese and balances the taste experience. That's a fair point.Roberts also thinks a general audience finds beer to be more approachable than wine, "even if what you ...
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Posted 05/23/2008 at 04:01 PM by Cathy
Since last September or so a group of dedicated book (and wine and food) lovers has come together the last Friday of the month at Cornerstone Bookstore in Salem. Yes, we all get the book of the month and yes, we all more or less read it all the way through and yes, we come prepared to talk about it. And we do talk about it. But we also drink the wine.This is the only book club I know where wine is an integral part of the discussion, "integral" for two reasons: the books we read are about wine / ...
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Posted 05/22/2008 at 11:55 AM by Cathy
What sparked your interest in wine?I believe it was, in my youth, a desire to be free of puritanical culture that then reigned in America, on the one hand and, on the other, to learn of and take pleasure in what French culture was offering to its students in the United States: an organized sensuality of everyday life.You take Harvard alumni on tours of wine regions. Tell me about your last trip. Where did you go? Who were your guests, and why did they join the trip?In fact the tour of several we ...
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Posted 05/21/2008 at 08:50 PM by Cathy
The first thing you do when you land in New Orleans is eat fresh, hot beignets, dusted with a very generous portion of powdered sugar. The second thing you do, is drink Champagne.(Or a Hurricane. Or a Sazerac, which was apparently invented in New Orleans by a Creole apothecary named Antoine Amadie Peychaud in the early 1800s.) The point is, drink something alcoholic, the stronger the better, and settle into the embrace that is New Orleans.Fortunately alcohol in its many incarnations has a lively ...
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Posted 05/20/2008 at 09:38 PM by Cathy
"Just look for the martini glass." That's what we got for directions when we asked some friends where to go to eat in Gloucester. Right away they said "Franklin's" but, not being as familiar with Gloucester as we should be, we needed a little orientation.I'm glad we found it. We found the martini glass on Main Street, which is lit like an "Eat At Joe's" neon sign above the door to the restaurant. And we found the perfect place for a casual dinner and a very decent bottle of wine.Franklin Cape An ...
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Posted 05/19/2008 at 11:58 AM by Cathy
Several years ago I spent a few very lovely days and nights in a tiny town called Dubuy, in the Ardennes region of Belgium. It was idyllic. Our room was in a converted, cozy castle (I realize cozy is not a regular adjective for castle, but in this case cozy is nonetheless an accurate assessment). When we ventured out we ventured often into unique (but not clichéd) shops that lined curvy alleyways barely slim enough to accommodate the breadth of a European economy car.Or, and this was the best pa ...
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Posted 05/18/2008 at 10:11 AM by Cathy
A few weeks ago Kate Christensen was awarded the PEN/Faulkner award in fiction for her novel The Great Man. Christensen, whose other books include In the Drink and The Epicure's Lament, is praised for the literary detailing that compose her vivid portrayals of the sometimes-not-so-pretty human condition. The human condition, as we all know, wouldn't be quite human without the pleasures and pain of feeding ourselves and this area too – namely, in the kitchen – is one of Christensen's strengths.Bu ...
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Posted 05/17/2008 at 12:14 PM by Cathy
Officially I attended the Nantucket Wine Festival on behalf of the Quarterly Review of Wines. As a QRW reporter, I had my orders for people to watch and stories to gather. Along the way, I couldn't help but notice the following trends:TREND FROM EUROPE: Spain is the HOT place to be. (No pun intended. Not really.) I've come to this conclusion on the basis of three pieces of evidence:1. Three "lifestyle lots" were included in the auction tonight, each one an all-access, no-holds barred, VIP, insid ...
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Posted 05/16/2008 at 06:40 PM by Cathy
"I'm so over Nantucket."That's what I heard, again and again, in the days and weeks before I left Boston to attend the Nantucket Wine Festival. I couldn't be over Nantucket – I hadn't even been there once yet – and I was definitely not over the Wine Festival. What's to be over, I wondered, with five days' worth of tastings and seminars and galas and auctions, all in celebration of my most beloved beverage?Okay, so there's the circus aspect of these kind of affairs, and it's easy to get fed up wi ...
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Posted 05/15/2008 at 04:02 PM by Cathy
Interview by Hannah Hausauer, Guest ContributorYou used to be an ER nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital. When did you first realize you wanted to pursue a career in the food industry? I worked at Mass. General Hospital over twelve years and enjoyed cooking as a hobby at that time. I started to attend non-professional classes with Madeleine Kamman at the French Library in Boston. Although it was a difficult decision, I left nursing in 1985 and decided to pursue a culinary career.As an ER nurs ...
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Posted 05/14/2008 at 08:42 PM by Cathy
If you don't have vertigo upon arrival at the dock in Nantucket, you'll get it as soon as you start walking or, worse, driving the cobblestone streets. There is not a single right angle in the landscape of the entire island. Not one. And that includes the human-made landscapes of streets, sidewalks, alleys and country roads.But that, of course, is the charm. It's a relief to stroll with shortened strides rather than lope along rapidly. It's a relief to browse in small shops rather than giant meg ...
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Posted 05/13/2008 at 08:05 PM by Cathy
The thing about Napa Cabs is that so many of them try very, very hard to be knock-'em-dead blockbusters. And most of them succeed at that so successfully that it would be difficult to all but the most nuanced palate to discern one Napa Cab from another in a blind tasting.So when I sat down today at the Four Seasons in Boston to try a vertical tasting of six Cabernets from Quintessa Vineyards, in Rutherford in the heart of Napa Valley, I was prepared but also a tiny bit skeptical. I am not a fan, ...
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Posted 05/12/2008 at 11:56 PM by Cathy
"Give me small plates any day and an extraordinary bottle of wine and I will be happy forever."Nanthida Bernardeau, 1946You'll see this quote on the way out of Small Plates, just before you tread down the few steps that put you back on JFK Street in Cambridge. On the way in, though, all I knew for sure was I'd be getting small, tapas-ish plates. Would I also get an extraordinary bottle of wine?That was my question. I'd come down this narrow, well-trafficked, unevenly-paved alleyway to see wh ...
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Posted 05/11/2008 at 08:34 PM by Cathy
About four years ago, wandering San Francisco early one evening, I was pulled toward the lights and sounds of Belden Place. Belden Place, I was told, is San Francisco's "French Quarter" and the strip of restaurants lining (and spilling out onto) this pedestrian-only narrow street possessed a very French character indeed. That character went way beyond the accent of our servers. The food, most notably the moules-frites at Plouf, were as authentic as, well, as authentic as the "real" moules-frites ...
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Posted 05/10/2008 at 11:53 PM by Cathy
Please link to Photo Essays in the right-hand corner of this page, then Nickel and Nickel, for a guided tour of the barn the winery reconstructed from a circa 1770 New Hampshire original. ...
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Posted 05/09/2008 at 11:52 PM by Cathy
Please link to Photo Essays in the upper right-hand corner of this page, then Shafer Vineyards, for a photo essay of today's Napa Valley field trip. ...
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Posted 05/08/2008 at 11:49 PM by Cathy
How does someone who's 25 years old come to be Wine and Beverage Director for Jody Adams at Rialto? In other words, how did you get the job?If you are asking me I would say I was lucky! But most people who know me believe that I have depth of knowledge on wine, particularly Italian wine. Jody is a luminary chef and restaurateur, she saw a passion and drive in me that I think spoke to her. She is also a very smart entrepreneur and she saw my age as a huge asset, which many people might have not. ...
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Posted 05/07/2008 at 07:44 PM by Cathy
Here's the thing about tasting a flight of Pinot Noirs: this particular wine oxidizes quickly, so its composition and character literally change while it sits in the glass. You've got to go back and retaste the samples, and they may taste drastically different than they did the first time. We came to Domaine Carneros to try a horizontal tasting of Pinot Noirs that were all grown within the Carneros AVA. For me, every one of the wines did taste drastically, unsettlingly different every time I tri ...
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Posted 05/06/2008 at 07:05 PM by Cathy
Eggs I'd seen before. Piggies and hippos were something new.Viader winery in Napa uses egg-shaped concrete fermentation tanks as part of their initiative to farm and process grapes biodynamically. Rudd Vineyards in Oakville aren't biodynamic, but they use the egg-shaped tanks to ferment part of their Sauvignon Blanc harvest. (The pigs and hippopotami look like the eggs rolled on their sides, with legs added for stability.) The challenge today, for the Mastering Wine class I was taking at the Cul ...
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Posted 05/05/2008 at 09:58 PM by Cathy
This week I'm taking a Mastering Wine course, taught by Karen MacNeil at the Culinary Institute of America in the Napa Valley. Each morning the class visits a different winery. Each winery arranges a carefully orchestrated tasting in order to highlight one particular learning goal of the course.Franciscan was our first stop, and the focus was Chardonnay. What was extraordinary about this tasting was the opportunity Franciscan gave us to compare unblended wine samples, that is, samples taken dire ...
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Posted 05/04/2008 at 06:03 PM by Cathy
I was on my way to the airport today when a friend of mine – a very good friend – tucked a few vouchers for free alcoholic beverages into my pocket. United Airlines' wine list isn't exactly renown but, en route from Boston to San Francisco, I didn't mind the distraction.There were two options, a white and a red, both handed to me in 187 ml bottles (about two glasses) with plastic cups. I unscrewed the cap on the white, a 2007 Chardonnay Clásico from Ventisquero winery in the Casablanca Valley of ...
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Posted 05/03/2008 at 11:04 PM by Cathy
Shelf-talkers that describe various wines aren't the only signs you'll see these days in the wine section at Shubie's Marketplace in Marblehead.There's also this one:Wines for the Weakening Dollar: As the dollar weakens, wine prices on imports will be creeping higher and higher. Now's the time to tuck a few of your favorite wines from abroad away for a rainy day.?That rainy day, my friends, is here. You know it, I know it, and so do the people who sell us wine."The rising price of wine changes y ...
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Posted 05/02/2008 at 05:39 PM by Cathy
It was a wine shop's version of a train crash.Eric Olson locked the door to his wine shop last Sunday evening and everything was fine. Then he unlocked the door Monday morning, and everything was definitely not fine."I knew right away I was in trouble," he said, as soon as he opened the door and felt hot air from inside the shop whoosh toward him. Olson rushed around opening doors to let cooler air in, but it was too late. Olson's wines were cooked. And so was his goose.In the span of less than ...
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Posted 05/01/2008 at 11:16 PM by Cathy
Interview by Vivian Ku, Guest ContributorHow did you become interested in wine?I have always been interested in wine, it was never a mystery or taboo in my family to have a glass with dinner, but professionally, I never considered a career in wine until I spent a year in Adelaide, Australia pursuing a Master's degree in Gastronomy. Day trips to McLaren Vale or the Clare Valley became a weekly routine and soon I started to think that the wine world would be a really fun place to have a career. Ca ...
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