“Our homemade nouveau is still quite foggy, but its coral-pink color is cheery; its aromas perfectly clean and rather pretty. There’s a trace of spritz and some lively, but not puckering, acidity. The flavors remind one taster of a dry version of Hawaiian Punch.” - Le Fauxjolais Nouveau est arrivé
Postcard from Sicily
SOMEWHERE STRAIGHT AHEAD of me lies Africa. Tunisia, I think, though I haven’t consulted a map to confirm it. I consider this as I sit on the little porch of our room at the Planeta winery in Sambuco di Sicilia on Sicily’s southwest coast and wonder how quickly, at after five in the afternoon, I can expect one of the …
A New England vintage 1: April
First in a series of posts about three New England wineries that will will run through the fall. PORTSMOUTH, R.I. The early April skies are gray, the midday light feeble, and temperatures in the vineyard on the banks of the Sakonnet River feel much colder than the low 40s the thermometer registers. Field workers (above) at Greenvale Vineyards are bundled …
Le fauxjolais nouveau est arrivé!
THE FROTHING MASS OF PINKNESS at left is a close-up of grapes, juice, skins, pips, and stems fermenting their little hearts out in our Central Bottle in-store, micro-scale winemaking project. Timed to coincide with the Cambridge Science Festival, the new wine is gurgling away at Central Bottle in a 5 gallon glass carboy borrowed from winemaker-for-real Kip Kumler at Turtle Creek Winery in nearby Lincoln, …
I’ll clink to that: on the uses of the toast
THE LAST TIME I SAW Italian actress Virna Lisi she was having a wonderful time vamping it up as a reptilian Queen Catherine de Medici in the 1994 film adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas potboiler La Reine Margot. The photo at left I take to be from her 1965 Hollywood film, How to Murder Your Wife. Together the smile, the eye-contact, the raised glass …
Wine is sexy – but is it gendered?
SEAN SHESGREEN’S scholarly paper “Wet Dogs and Gushing Oranges: Winespeak for the New Millenium” is clever and entertaining enough to have been rejected by any self-respecting peer-reviewed journal. In it the former English professor describes the various ways in which wine writers have sought to describe and categorize wine over the last two centuries (wine-writing as we know it doesn’t …
Does this wine make my butt look big?
WE WERE ON A ROAD TRIP recently that took us from New Orleans to St. Augustine, FL and thence up through Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC. It was an eye-opener for me to realize how readily southerners pegged me for someone not like them. It wasn’t just the Boston in my speech apparently, but some complex of factors involving dress, …
What makes it good: Thoughts on quality in wine. Part 2
I WENT OUT ON A LIMB last week trying to come to terms with what quality amounts to in wine – in some cases backing into it by suggesting what quality isn’t. I inched further out on the same shaky branch when I promised that in a subsequent post I would have a stab at whether quality can be tasted …
The overall excellence of a thing: Thoughts on quality in wine. Part 1
THE BELIEF THAT A FORTUITOUSLY-SITED vineyard can consistently produce wines of exceptional quality is at the very root of the notion of cru and appears to reach back to Pharaonic times. From the medieval era to the mid-twentieth century the English relied upon the reputations of blender-shippers at the port of Bordeaux (above) as a warranty of quality. The various …
Are you an Epicurian, or just epicurious?
THE STERN LOOKING FELLOW at left is Epicurus, a Greek philosopher of the early third century BCE. Considering that his name is linked to a way of life that puts a premium on sensual pleasure you might have expected him to look a bit more cheery, or at least a little fleshier. Granted, his facial hair does have the look …
Tasting it all the same
I’VE NEVER BEEN EXACTLY SURE why the blog for Central Bottle Wine + Provisions (where I’m on the floor two days a week) has the name it does – Italltastesthesametome. My colleagues at this elegant little Cambridge, Massachusetts wine shop titled it well before I came on the scene. I’ve puzzled over this. Wine doesn’t all taste the same does it? And isn’t that …
The fog of wine
IN MOVIES OF A CERTAIN KIND (the kind I most like) fog plays a prominent role. I’m thinking of films like The Third Man, Quai des Brumes, and Brief Encounter. Fog evokes mystery, doubt, and a vague anxiety - all lovely things when you’re longing to sink into something noirish. Wine and fog have some associations, too. There’s the noble …
Michel Bettane on terroir
Former Classics professor Michel Bettane may be the most influential writer on wine in France today. With colleague Thierry Desseauve, he publishes Bettane & Desseauve’s Guide to the Wines of France. Bettane has emerged as a vocal critic of those who claim that organic certification is any guarantee of quality and has been particularly strident in his denunciation of “natural” …
Stephen Meuse
. . . has taught courses in the history of food and wine at Boston University’s graduate program in Gastronomy and was longtime wine columnist for The Boston Globe.
He regularly talks wine on NPR’s America’s Test Kitchen Radio with host Christopher Kimball.
Most Fridays and Saturdays he can be found at Central Bottle Wine + Provisions in Cambridge, Massachusetts pulling corks and wandering the floor in search of an ear to bend and a palate to please.
Reach him at sm@tableintime.com
Follow @stephen_meuse
America’s Test Kitchen Radio
Is a decanter of Tawny Port something you remember your grandfather reaching for? They may have a reputation that marks them as quaintly old-fashioned, but these barrel-aged, fortified wines are delightful both as after dinner sips and, lightly chilled, as stimulating aperitifs. Listen as Christopher Kimball and I explore the subject on WGBH radio here. Our chat begins at 16:23.