Last week, I was in the Cape, existing more or less solely on seafood. One dish, if you will, that has transcended New England appeal and now is making a showing in the trendiest spots in NYC (including out of basements in Brooklyn ) is the lobster roll. Simple in preparation, it consists of about four ounces of cold lobster meat, a mix of claw, knuckle and often tail. This is delicately coated with mayonnaise that may include a other herbs... 

Have you ever lifted a bottle of champagne and thought, “Wow, that’s heavy!” Well, the bottles are heavy partly with good reason: to contain all the sparkly goodness, which can be six times the atmospheric pressure. (And, of course, there’s a little bling factor to the bulk.) Apparently, before sufficiently strong bottles were developed, cellar staff in Champagne would enter the caves with masks akin to a hockey goalie’s... 

Who is man enough for an impossible food-wine pairing? Well, for those with a set of steel, head on over to the seventh (!) annual World Testicle Cooking Championship in Serbia. There, the AP reports that chefs prepare bull, boar, camel, ostrich and kangaroo testicles in such dishes as testicle pizza and testicles in bechamel sauce. Outback oysters! Needless to say, the AP ensures us that “visitors eat the dishes with plenty of wine or... 

A couple of years ago, I had an op-ed in the NYT arguing for wine in a box. Since then, box wine sales have skyrocketed and many more selections, both foreign and domestic, have come on the market. But one category that seems woefully underrepresented stateside is rosé. Given that it is perhaps the quintessential “here today, gone tomorrow” kind of wine, it seems particularly well-suited for the bag-in-box format. Fridges across... 

Last fall, my younger brother, Conrad, sailed from France to Brazil. By himself. In a race. On a 20 foot boat. He set off from Brittany, where, aged 25, he was living in a used electrician’s van. He sailed about ten days to Madeira where the fleet stopped for fresh supplies before setting off again for Brazil. However, the degree of difficulty was raised for him when he lost one of his solar panels…  Read More →

How often is the alcohol level stated on the label consistent with what is actually in the bottle? Wines are allowed a certain fudge factor between what appears on the label and what is actually in the bottle. For wines under 14%, the wine can fluctuate by 1.5 percentage points, which explains why so many wines have traditionally been labeled 12.5% since that gave the maximum flexibility. Above 14%, the producer must pay a higher tax ($1.57... 

Chilled red. It sounds like an oxymoron. Or something that would get your membership revoked at the club. But, in fact, it works. The key is to choose a red wine that is low in tannin, which explains why Beaujolais from the thin-skinned Gamay grape, often is the prime red candidate for chilling. Bringing the wine’s temperature down to say 55 degrees, gives the wine an added refreshment value (you can slip one of those ice…  Read More →

The other day, I was waiting for a train or a plane, flipping through magazines at a newsstand. I picked up the August copy of Food & Wine and saw Ray Isle’s fun, simple graphic suggesting changing white wines as the weather heats up. Since I wrote a whole book centered on pairing wine with the seasons , I applaud all outdoor-temperature related pairings, which add more of the context of consumption. Generally, as the temperature... 

Today’s summer wine factoid: Nomacorc, a purveyor of plastic wine closures that require a corkscrew to remove, was the brainchild of a Belgian businessman who made a fortune manufacturing extruded plastics, including pool noodles. So if you’ve been floating around in the pool this summer and sensed a connection, you’re right. In related news, plastic closures were the closure that consumers disliked the most by a two-to-one... 

SIPPED: X-Ray vision for wine lists? The above image comes from wondertonic.tumblr.com SIPPED: satire HoseMaster continues his discussion of Carbon Footprint wines, including “Creeping Deforestation” & “Screw the Ozone” [ HoseMaster of Wine ] SIPPED: dug up from the cellar “Perth Pink….This is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down and avoiding.” An old Monty Python wine sketch... 

Recently, my seven-year-old son dug up some worms, made a sign, set up a table on the street and sold them for ten cents each. “Great for your garden! Great for fishing!” ran his pitch. He made $9, including tips. That’s almost better than wine writing! On a somewhat related note, check out the profile of Brett Ottolenghi–alternately known as “the truffle kid” or “Hamleg”–in the current issue... 

This week’s big story is the dramatic, emergency-slide resignation of JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater. Following verbal abuse from a passenger, he took to the PA system to let everyone on board know that he’d had enough, popped the inflatable emergency slide, threw down his carry-ons, grabbed a couple of beers from the drinks cart, and then slid down to the tarmac and walked to the employee parking lot at JFK. Working in a... 

SPIT: “imbibing idiot bias” Job applicants who partake in alcoholic drinks are perceived as less intelligent and hireable according to a new academic study, dubbing the phenomenon an “imbibing idiot bias.” In the actual experiments, the subject ordered a glass of “house merlot,” so perhaps the conclusion is valid. But what if the subject ordered a glass of hipster wine, such as pineau d’aunis or Txakoli,... 

Site reader Supertunaman sent in this label shot (about the quality of most UFO sighting photos) with the comment, “LOLOL!” What’s so funny? If Miller is the Champagne of Beers, perhaps this is the Champagne of White Zinfandels? Actually, since a 2005 bilateral accord between the US and the EU, the term Champagne cannot be used on new labels of American sparkling wine. So this Barefoot wine (now owned by E. & J. Gallo)... 

I keep meaning to do a comparative tasting of wines made from the mencia grape. But every time I get a bottle, I drink it! Case in point: D. Ventura’s Vina do Burato, 2008 (about $19). Weighing in at a spare 12% alcohol, this is a great summer red, perfect for chilling and serving dining outside. It’s reminiscent of a cru Beaujolais, although a tad darker in color, but with that same lively acidity, bright fruit and scoring highly...