Food, Wine & Cultural Connections
Today, it’s not true that all wines improve with extended aging. In fact, most wines commonly available to consumers are best enjoyed within approximately 3-6 years of the vintage date. If you’re putting down a bottle for longer than that, make sure it’s worth the effort.
Sometimes it’s helpful to question accepted “knowledge”—those tenacious bits of information that are taken as gospel because they’ve floated around in the ether for so long they must be true: You’ll catch a cold from walking in the rain…If you swim too soon after a big meal, you could drown…Elvis faked his own death and […]
In March, I was lucky enough to snag a last-minute tasting appointment at Merry Edwards Winery, located in the renowned Russian River Valley region of California, about 70 miles north of San Francisco. We were staying in nearby Bodega Bay on a family vacation, and it was an irresistibly short trip from there to get […]
Recently, we headed back to the place where it all started, way back in June of 2014, when your humble food and wine blogger put pen to paper (so to speak) to share a few thoughts about the The Refuge Bar & Bistro, the popular Waterway Avenue craft cocktail bar in The Woodlands. Local wine expert Denman Moody […]
When U.S. wine lovers think of Spain, they immediately think “Rioja.” But there’s a new kid on the block, gaining prominence and shelf space as more people discover its robust yet elegant reds. The accolades for the Ribera del Duero continue to grow, and in 2012 it was named wine region of the year by Wine […]
Years ago, on a crowded night in the French Quarter, we had no reservations for dinner and seemingly no prospects of eating anything worthwhile, having been firmly rebuffed by every hostess desk within walking distance of our hotel. All, that is, except for Galatoire’s. With its “no reservations” policy for the downstairs dining room (and […]
Do we throw around an expression like “gracious service” these days? And is there a scarcity of places that provide it? In an age when some of the best upscale dining seems to require the symbols of self-consciously “unselfconscious” informality (sleeve tattoos, chef-owners in ball caps, exposed bricks and beams, communal tables, menus full of […]
A trip to the Monterey Peninsula would not be complete without an excursion to the nearby wine country of the Santa Lucia Highlands. I had done the research, but it wasn’t until we actually touched down in San Francisco that our group was able to come together and figure out which day was going to […]
If Monterey Peninsula were a woman, she’d be the one that all the others envy. The one who doesn’t give much thought to hair or clothes or makeup. For her, it all just comes together effortlessly, a unique kind of beautiful that you can’t get from poring over the fashion boards on Pinterest. Like the […]
Beauty and the Beast: It was 8:30 p.m., and we had hopped two monorails to get to Epcot after arriving just a few hours earlier at The Contemporary Hotel in the Magic Kingdom. We were late for our reservation at the Biergarten in Epcot’s Germany Pavilion, and people were packing themselves in like beached sardines […]
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