We roared up the zigzag roads of the Douro just after sunrise, taking the hairpin turns at breakneck speed. I bounced around the truck bed, snapping photos with one foot planted on my suitcase—to steady myself, but also to protect my precious liquid cargo. At the start of this trip, my suitcase was packed with […]
Last post, we discussed how different types of Port are aged, but we didn’t actually drink any. Today, we’re going to fix that: Niepoort, another family-owned Port house, makes a “Junior Ruby” and “Senior Tawny” which epitomize and should clear up the difference between their respective styles. We’ll begin with the Junior Ruby, which is […]
I should be on a plane home right now. SISAB ended yesterday with a final round of drinks and a glorious a cappella rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” in the hotel lobby. But instead of returning to the frozen hell that is New York City, I decided to hop a train north to Porto, where […]
As the manager of a wine shop, nothing drives me crazier than the question, “Where are your sulfite-free wines?” First of all, sulfites, while more often than not added as a preservative, also and always—repeat, always—occur naturally in wine. Second, if you don’t get a sulfite headache from eating raisins, you won’t get it from drinking wine. […]
“Both of these seem kind of stiff,” I confessed to Rui Martins of Herdade da Comporta. We were standing by the winery’s tasting room window, which looks out over the surrounding salt marsh. In addition to a winery, Herdade da Comporta also happens to be a rice farm, and much of the marsh is planted […]
Quinta de Catralvos, the site of Malo Tojo, is only a 45-minute drive from Lisbon. Approaching the winery, we drive parallel to a vineyard planted with Castelão vines, still barren in early March. Giant urns line the winery courtyard, which overlooks a small grove of orange trees, bordered on all sides by more vineyards—these planted […]
“Sake works best with subtleties,” says Roger Dagorn, Master Sommelier and Sake Samurai, and the only person on Earth to be both. We’re on the sixth course of the seminar—dessert, for which he’s paired Hanahato Junmai Kijoshu with a milk chocolate mousse. So far, despite not knowing much about sake, I’ve kept up, but here […]
Last Monday, I stopped by Obicà Mozzarella Bar for a vertical tasting of Tenuta San Leonardo, a historic estate in the Vallagarina Valley, which carries the Adige River through Northern Italy’s Trentino region. San Leonardo has been making its signature wine, the Bordeaux-style blend San Leonardo Vigneti delle Dolomiti IGT, since 1982. We sampled all the […]
The House of Angostura has been making rum for longer than anyone reading this has been alive, and they’ve been crafting aromatic bitters for even longer than that. Unfortunately, due to New York State’s arbitrary, inexplicable liquor laws, I cannot sell those bitters (which is particularly odd, since I can sell other bitters with the […]
Nights like last Tuesday are the reason I’m in this business. There are 211 Master Sommeliers on the planet, and only one I’ve ever heard play “Friend of the Devil” on guitar. A deadhead since the cradle, I found that alone worth the schlep to the Upper East Side, though the six-course meal was a […]
