The Cancellation Effect In Food And Wine Pairing.

Chapter Nine, Part Five.
Matching food and wine by weight will put you in the ballpark when choosing the proper wine, but taste is the key to hitting an astronomic-gastronomic home run. Sweet, sour, salt, bitter, umami and piquance interact with one another in predictable ways and once you understand how these principles apply at your dining room table you’ll be able to create some major league food and wine combinations. I lump these interactions into three categories I call the cancellation effect, the cumulative effect, and the neutral effect.

Terroir; From Great Vines Come Great Wines.

Chapter Eleven. Part Three.

There’s an expression among winemakers that says, “95% of every wine is made in the vineyard.” This simply means that despite the best efforts of man to manipulate wine, its quality ultimately depends on the grapes they start with. Unless of course man takes his 5% and really screws things up, in which case he’ll remind us that 95% of the wine is made in the vineyard. And in case you’re wondering, that’s the vineyard where sour grapes come from.

Life Worth Living Starts With Wine Worth Drinking.

2015 Massanois Tasting at The City Winery.

I‘ve always been inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt, who once said, “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” I took her advice to heart and I’m happy to report that I’m back at my laptop now that I’ve made bail.

Speaking of bail, last year I reviewed several wines from the Massanois trade tasting and I was able to attend again this year due to a glaring lapse in security. I only tasted the domestic wines this year because those are the wineries I wanted to pester into giving me a job. I’ve been ungainfully employed as a blogger since selling The Wine Seller last year but at least they let me keep the computer, the tax records, and the ulcer.

The Topsy-Turvy Vineyards Of Babcock Winery.

Bryan Babcock & WineSnark tour Babcock Vineyards in the Sta. Rita Hills appellation of the Central Coast.

From the back seat of Bryan Babcock’s Volkswagen I noticed something unusual about his vineyards. The grapes were experiencing an unusually early onset of veraison (when grapes soften and change color) but it wasn’t the patch-quilt appearance of the clusters that caught my attention. Babcock’s Pinot Noir vines appeared to be growing upside-down.

Babcock, a born innovator, explained, “I’ve worked out a system that allows the vines to grow more naturally. I’ve taken the starting point of my growing higher off the ground so that my shoots can grow down naturally … as opposed to working against gravity.” The visual effect can be startling