Already a busy husband, father, and social change advocate, not to mention being at the top of his game as a singer-songwriter, the ever-multitasking 12-time Grammy winner John Legend took on yet another task in 2015 when he teamed up with acclaimed winemaker Jean-Charles Boisset and released the first of what is now a varied…
History Is Deeply Rooted in Cinque Terre Wine Country
Standing with arms outstretched in the sun on his steeply terraced vineyard above the Ligurian Sea, Alessandro Crovara told us proudly, “This is my office.” My husband and I had come to Cinque Terre at our daughters’ recommendation during a longer trip to Italy. We were ready to soak up the five seaside towns and…
Why You Should Never Buy Cooking Wine
Just about every single item that’s sold at the supermarket has some usefulness. Even the most obscure processed meat, bizarre seasoning blend or suspicious-looking canned seafood, has someone, somewhere, who considers it an essential component of their diet and refuses to live without it; even the most mysterious cooking aids, like Kitchen Bouquet, have their uses,…
Strawberry Wine
Sweet and berry-forward, this easy strawberry wine recipe tastes delicate and bright. You’ll love its vivid red color and delicate sweetness. It’s lovely served as a dessert wine on a summer evening. Most modern recipes call for mashing the berries and fermenting the mash with yeast, as you might do to make wine, but older…
The Significance of Sauvignon Blanc
Sauvignon blanc is one of the world’s most popular white wines, and for a columnist who started writing about wine 45 years ago, that’s a shock. I’ve always been a fan of it and hoped it would get popular. In the early 1980s, I wrote that this variety was well under the radar and was…
Pop the Corks: Becoming a Sommelier
What constitutes a wine expert or sommelier? Fine restaurants employ wine stewards to assist in the selection and presentation of wines. The best ones are professional and discreet, taking care to provide gentle advice and thus help ensure that the diners choose a wine that perfectly suits their meals, palates, and budgets. Because there’s so…
The Importance of Regions
There is a regional authenticity to certain food and beverage products, which is one reason that we make distinctions between the different coffees coming from Brazil, Ethiopia or Hawaii. And it’s why coffees from such special places cost more than blended coffees from unnamed places. The regionality a site imparts to certain agricultural products is…
Napa Valley’s Once-Overlooked ‘Downtown’ Becomes a Wine Destination
By Sharyn Jackson From Star Tribune Our driver waved the car behind us to go around. We were chugging up a slight hill in a little white tuk-tuk, past blooming fields of mustard flowers that looked like they’d been caught in the line of fire at an all-yellow paintball game. Our open-air electric vehicle had…
Mexico’s Coastal and Wine Regions Offer Culture, Cuisine That Will Call You Back Again and Again
by Marlise Kast-Myers Tribune News Service It had been 18 months since my passport had seen daylight. Travel restrictions, lockdowns and, frankly, some level of complacency were to blame for my silenced exploration. My husband, Benjamin, and I had traded in airline tickets and carry-ons for tents and fishing poles to take our pack of…
Obscure Grapes
In early June, I will be a speaker at an industry technical conference in Geneva, New York, on a grape variety that, chances are, you have never heard of before, though it’s one that makes extremely nice red wines. Bryan Ulbrich, winemaker at his excellent winery Left Foot Charley, and I will explore the grape…
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