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The Curse of the Wine-Killer Foods and Ways to Get Past Them

It's sad. There are some very good foods and food ingredients that have a way of killing the wines we serve with them. Does that mean we should stop eating those foods or that we should stop drinking wine with them? It turns out the answer is neither. We just need to be more careful about how we are pairing them. Fair warning before you read further that this might get a little bit or a lot geeky. Then again, I might change my mind and it might not be geeky at all. We shall see as my flying fingers tap dance on my keyboard. Let's start with an easy one, relatively speaking: chocolate. Now, as chocolate afficionados of which I am not one know, there are all different varieties of chocolate: sweet, semi-sweet, bitter, mik, different percentages, and more. They all have different characteristics, but they also all have a commonality. They are all ultimately a byproduct of the cocoa beans that come from the cacao tree. Probably the biggest challenge in chocolate is the pyrocyanidi...
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Why Winemakers Blend Grapes

Just a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the mystique of blends, particularly red blends. But why do winemakers blend varieties of grapes into a single wine? Is it just commercial or is there science to it? And if there is science, is there also art? I think the answer to all of those questions is yes. For some, it's simply trial and error, and frankly, there is nothing wrong with trial and error, but I suspect that the finest wines blend grapes using a splash of science combined with a dollop of art. But escaping from the finest wines to just some pleasing ones, the commercial side often takes center stage. What's really going on? Let's start by considering perhaps the best known blend, the red Bordeaux. Frequent readers here, moderately knowledgeable wine drinkers and people who have searched for it probably know that there are five red Bordeaux grapes -- alphabetically, Cabernet France, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. How exactly did they come to b...
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From a Reader Question: Why do Some Barolos Taste so Different from Other Barolos?

When I "announced' that I was going to restart this blog on a semi-regular basis, I also solicited topics. After all, one of the biggest reasons I stopped doing this blog for quite a while was that it is really difficult to come up with fresh ideas that I know enough about to write off the top of my head. One of the first requests that I got was to explain why there is so much difference in taste profile from one Barolo to another. For starters, I don't know when the difference becomes so much. Is so much a lot, a little, or somewhere in between? I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder. Before we get into the actual topic here, let's get to Barolo. If you're coming with me, we're going to fly from Atlanta to Milan (Milano if you prefer) and try to sidestep the Winter Olympic traffic. It's cool, but not frigid today and the "nuclear snow" as the ski mountaneering expert described it yesterday has stopped. The drive from Milan to Barolo is n...
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Wine and Your Memory

 You saw the title and you were hoping, weren't you? Admit it. You thought I was going to report on a new discovery that drinking copious amounts of wine around the clock every day was going to improve your memory. I'm not. I've been working on this experiment for a while now and drinking wine has not improved my memory. Perhaps it has occasionally distorted my memory, but it hasn't improved it ... at least not yet. For me, however, the good news is that memory is still pretty darn good, so I'm here to report that wine seems to have not diminished my memory. So why I am I writing this? I want you to use your memory in order to enjoy your wine more. It works for me and it can work for you. And, contrary to popular belief, if you do use your memory whether or not you choose to combine it with one of those wine apps that I disdain, you'll get more pleasure out of wine. What do I mean?  I want you to remember what wines you liked and why. Not just that it was a Merl...
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The Mystique, Attraction, and Fallacy of the "Red Blend"

 Welcome back!! As those of you who were regular or semi-regular readers know, I went about a year and a half writing original content off the top of my head. I ran out of steam. I ran out of ideas. Now I'm back, but not every day. Yesterday, I paid a visit to one of my seemingly favorite homes away from home -- the Delta Sky Club. For those who have never been in one, it's an airport lounge frequented for the most part by people who fly an awful lot on Delta as well as some who simply have the right credit cards or who spend more money on it than it is worth. In any event, almost all of the Sky Clubs have a bar with selections of complimentary alcoholic beverages as well as "premium" ones that you can pay for with dollars or with Sky Miles. Yesterday, being done with client interaction for the day and knowing I was not getting behind the wheel again for the day, I ventured to the Sky Club bar as did a seemingly professional woman probably about 40 years old. She orde...
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For the "Big Game" -- Super Bowl Wine

I know; you drink beer on Super Bowl Sunday. But maybe you're not really a beer drinker. Perhaps you like wine better. But it's so hard to figure out what to drink with your Super Bowl food. Why is that? There is so much variety. If you're eating at the Super Bowl the way lots of other gluttonous Americans who plan to take Monday off from work do, you've got a huge variety of foods at your disposal. Let's go through them and see some of the problems: Chips and salsa -- salty and acidic Chips and veggie dip -- salty and green Barbecue of one type or another -- salty, a little spicy or a lot spicy, and likely somewhat fatty Wings -- spicy or lemony or garlicky or fried and maybe with blue or some combination Veggie platter -- somewhat bland, but the dips will change that Charcuterie platter -- fatty, sometimes spicy meats and cheeses that do or do not go with the meats All kinds of sandwiches usually with meats that fit into some of the catgories above Pizza More frie...
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Effects of Temperature Increases on Wine Production

Let's get to the controversy first. This is not a debate about long-term shifts in climate on earth and what is or is not causing them. If that is the debate that you do want, there are plenty of places online that you can do that. Frankly, as someone who doesn't study climate science, my thoughts on the matter should no more influence yours than should any other random person's. Here is a fact. The last 10 years or so have been warmer across essentially our entire planet than they have been over any other 10 year period since people started using thermometers and recording temperatures for posterity. Roughly 50 years ago back in the 1970s, we had a multi-year period during which temperatures were much colder than norms over the same periods of manually or electronically recorded temperatures. Each has an effect on wine. Let's consider what this does to wine and to some extent why. And, before you think I've misled you, this is not about wine that might have been ma...
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