Food, Wine, Good (and Evil) Spirits

I'm obsessed with wine bars. Or I guess I should say, finding the perfect wine bar. Every trip we take usually revolves around this odd quirk. However, it was not a priority on this excursion to Chicago. We only had one day in the city and I initially had other plans. Plus, the places I wanted to go were too far away from our hotel. Or so I thought. Traffic ruined my morning itinerary, so we ended up grabbing a quick snack and then just walking along Michigan Avenue window shopping, trying to overcome the minor hangover from the night before. With no thought of wine on my mind what do we come upon? ENO, a quaint little bar in the InterContinental Hotel, that specializes in wine flights, cheese and charcuterie. Believe me when I tell you I was going to resist, until they mentioned their Blind Tasting challenge. After a decade of serious education and tasting, I felt sure I could come out a winner...and so we sat down.

The challenge is pretty simple: they give you a flight of three reds or three whites and you have to determine grape variety, new vs old world, country, region and the age of the wine (1-3/4-7/7-10/11+). Two Bonus Points if you actually guessed the wine. The more you get right the cheaper the flight becomes. With a total of 21 answers per flight we felt confident we could get at least 8 right, which would knock $8 off the flight. If we got lucky and answered 21 correctly the flight would be only $5.05. We took the challenge very seriously, but were quickly humbled.

I’m sure there are stranger routes that land you on a tour of a winery surrounded by the beauty and quirky history of Santa Clarita, but you wouldn’t think a rare breed of dog (and a college application) would be one of them. I take my dog, who is a white Portuguese water dog, to a play group (don’t judge me) in Pacific Palisades. Jill Miller, a breeder of Rottweiler’s and the lady who surrenders her back yard to be mangled by at least 9 puppies every Saturday happened to mention one day that she knew someone else who had owned my rare breed of dog. At that same time, our daughter Hannah and I recently toured Chapman University and had fallen in love with it. Turns out, that same owner of our rare breed of dog, Barry Goldfarb, also had a daughter who had gone to Chapman and he stayed very involved with the school. Jill insisted we meet.

I dragged my heels for a while, but finally, at Jill’s assurance that Barry was a ‘cool guy’, I called...

He invited Hannah and me to his house. My first thought upon seeing him was: jock. I only mention this because it’s the last thing you expect a vintner to look like, but that was his business. After we talked and he showed me and Hannah his amazing collection of antique slot machines, he was gracious enough to offer my husband Chad and me, along with Amy Ephron and her husband Alan Rader, a tour of his winery, the Agua Dulce Winery.

It was important that Chad and Amy and Alan come. I needed them to come. Not only do I know nothing about wine. I don’t drink. A lifelong teetotaler, if it didn’t taste like Delaware Punch, I was out.

From the NY Times

I hadn’t thought of making tiramisù since the 1990s when it was all the rage, but in March friends asked me to bring dessert to their party, and it came to mind. Fashionable or not, it’s perfect for a crowd but also foolproof enough to assemble with my toddler daughter underfoot. It was a hit, extremely satisfying in a creamy, trifle-esque kind of way, yet more sophisticated thanks to the espresso and shot of sambuca moistening the layers.

I filed the recipe under “good for hungry hordes,” and planned to fish it out for a weekend away with friends. But as that weekend drew closer, I reconsidered. Baskets of plump, scarlet strawberries had finally appeared at the farmers’ market, and I really wanted to make them the focal point of dessert.

The creamy mascarpone and ladyfinger layers in tiramisù are a natural with strawberries. But the espresso is too overbearing to match well with the sweet fruit. All I had to do was swap out the liquid. It was early evening when all this pondering was going on, so naturally my mind leaped to the coming cocktail hour. What would be a good, boozy pairing with strawberries?

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From the NY Times

When Thomas Jefferson embarked on his grand tour of France in 1787, he claimed the journey was for his health. A broken wrist sent him 1,200 miles south from Paris to take the mineral waters at Aix-en-Provence, and on the way he planned to fulfill his professional obligations as America’s top envoy to France, researching French architecture, agriculture and engineering projects.

But when he chose to begin his three-month journey in the vine-covered slopes of Burgundy, Jefferson’s daughter, Martha, became suspicious. “I am inclined to think that your voyage is rather for your pleasure than for your health,” she teased him in a letter.

In fact, Jefferson’s five-day visit to the Côte d’Or — a region famous even in the 18th century for its extraordinary terroir — was not accidental. After spending more than two years in Paris establishing diplomatic relations with the court of Louis XVI, Jefferson, a lifelong oenophile, had tasted his share of remarkable vintages. Now he was keen to discover the vineyards and cellars of Burgundy, and to study firsthand a winemaking tradition that stretched back to the 11th century.

“I rambled thro’ their most celebrated vineyards, going into the houses of the laborers, cellars of the vignerons, and mixing and conversing with them as much as I could,” Jefferson wrote about the winemakers in a letter posted during his trip.

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