When we wake up Sunday in the spare bedroom above the tasting room, the light from the windows is so bright that I think it’s noon. Afraid we missed the morning’s pressing—Touriga Nacional was supposed to go into the crusher today—I fish around for my phone. Elena looks out the window. “Snow!” she cries. It’s […]
Posts in category Words on Booze
Rain Shadow
Not much you’d want to consume grows in Western Washington. If you can eat, drink, or smoke it, chances are it was grown in a greenhouse or the rain shadow east of the Cascades. Seattle apologists will tell you it rains more in New York, while neglecting to mention that several epic storms just ain’t the […]
Drinking While I Can
With ISIS clamoring at the Syrian border and President Erdoğan at war with the Kurdish population of what should no longer be his country, things in Turkey are going to get ugly quick; I plan to see a bit more of it before they do. As a sendoff, Ayşegül’s mother Funda prepared an incredible dinner: […]
Indulging in Indulgence
It’s not just what Turkish people eat that surprises me (like tavukgöğsü, a chicken-based dessert), but how they eat. Here, as everywhere, social life revolves around food and booze (or, if you’re religious, just food), but unlike elsewhere, the social ritual of the Turkish meal is unbounded by time constraints. In New York City, you […]
Cabernet and Bullet Holes
At the edge of the Artists’ Colony in Tzfat, a building riddled with bullet holes marks the dividing line between what were once the city’s Jewish and Arab neighborhoods. This building is the Antique Safed Winery. In 1948, when the British withdrew from the land that would become Israel, they offered to shuttle every Jew […]
My (Biased) Madeira 101
Over 1000 kilometers from mainland Portugal, the island of Madeira enjoys summer temperatures around 22°C and winters around 16°C (and I’m American so none of those numbers mean anything to me). This is a hot climate for wine, and while a few weirdos are out there planting Vitis whatever-the-American-species-is*, most winemakers on the island are […]
Hardy Wine, Unlikely Clime
Pico is an island in the Azores archipelago famed for its fortified wines and named for its volcano—at 7713 feet, the tallest in Portugal, and the tallest island mountain in the Atlantic (there are taller ones underwater). “Lajido” is the name of the solidified lava into which the vines on Pico are planted; it’s also the […]
A Needy Grape You Need to Try
Ramisco (pronounce the “R” like an “H”) is a picky varietal: it only likes sandy soils, it demands to be planted deep, and it requires lots of aging to open up. There are only 10 hectares of Ramisco remaining on this planet; there was more planted not long ago, but Colares, the Lisboa appellation that […]