” I ATE HIS LIVER WITH…..” HANNIBAL LECHTER’S REAL CHOICE, AND MORE ABOUT WINE IN FICTION
I was recently taken by a wine scene in a crime novel I am currently reading, A Conflict of Interest, by Adam Mitzner. In it, the night before his surrender to the FBI, a rich white collar criminal takes his lawyer to dinner at Peter Luger, a famous steakhouse in Brooklyn. When the waiter arrives with a wine list he rejects it. He already knows what he wants. He asks for Amarone, bring us your best he adds with a flair. Amarone would not have been my top guess for a wine to impress guests in such a restaurant. More[...]
AGING POTENTIAL OF WINES; HAZARDOUS PREDICTIONS
Of all the intimidating mysteries in the wine world, the aging potential of given wines is up there at the top. To be sure, for a vast majority of wine lovers this is a non-issue. Most wine is consumed within less than an hour of purchase. But us wine geeks – all right, let’s call ourselves collectors – obsessively grapple with this subject. How long do we cellar a given bottle? When do we know it has reached its peak? How do we tell what vintages are more age-worthy than others? First there are the basics. Certain wines are known[...]
ROTHSCHILDS IN THE NEW WORLD
Rothschild family coat of armsConsolidation and globalization races along in the wine world, with companies such as Gallo, Diageo and Constellation gobbling up winemakers like Pac-Man. The French are not to be outdone, the famous and famously rich Rothschild Family leaders in this process.Case in point is this wine that appeared in our Friday night blind tasting recently. We all guessed it as a high quality Napa Cabernet. It had hints of eucalyptus and mint on the nose, a slightly sweet, bold fruit profile and oak in the finish. It was smooth, complex and elegant. I thought maybe Chateau[...]
ETHEM EFENDI
The Ottomans were a cosmopolitan empire. At their height they stretched through Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East and North Africa. In the aftermath of World War I, when the empire collapsed, it was replaced by a new Turkish Republic situated solely in Asia Minor and a sliver of Europe in Thrace. It was a nationalist republic that painted all its citizens with a Turkish brush, denying existence of ethnic diversity. For those of us who grew up in 1960s Istanbul, Albania was a far away land. In actual reality it was only a short flight from Istanbul, closer[...]
NOUVEAU, A NEW NEW COPIES THE OLD NEW
Tomorrow, Friday, November 18th, Wine Wizard’s, our regular Friday night haunt, will be packed with a festive crowd. It happens every November, for today, the third Thursday of the month, is when this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau is released and the party begins.For those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, Beaujolais is a region in central France, immediately south of Burgundy, that produces light red wines made of the Gamay grape. It has ten different appellations, so called Cru Beaujolais, each with their own names. They are considered serious wines, despite being eclipsed by Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays from Burgundy, the region’s more[...]
ON THE BOTTLE VS IN THE BOTTLE; A CRITICAL MATCH
A prior blog in which I explored a defect in wine (see “Fatuous Fermentation; Causes and Remedies” 9/23/2016) reminded me of a simple rule I formulated years ago and wrote about. Now that I have a wider readership, it is time to revisit it. To me there are two basic categories of wine defects. The first is chemical. These include premature oxidation, cork taint, secondary fermentation, contamination with Brett or other organisms, too much sulfur, to name a few. These problems mostly originate at the vineyard or winery and represent technical problems in winemaking.The second category, the one I’d like[...]