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Alex pointed towards a hilltop as we entered the valley town of Negrar and I respectfully inhaled a first breath of Quintarelli air.  We were on our way to visit Francesco Grigoli, Guiseppe Quintarelli’s grandson.  Climbing a series of switchback roads and white knuckle turns landed us at a modest home sitting atop the cellars [...]

Walter Filipitti’s book The Taste Soloist, heavily supported by Stefano Scatà’s photography, will lure you closer to a Friuli Venezia Giulia visit and witnessing a powerful expression of ancestral driven wine and food culture.  Photos, recipes, and tales featuring a cooperative of the region’s best knife, cheese, prosciutto, vinegar, wine, and artisan food makers are perfect [...]

It is important to walk to Noma over city bridges and along waterfront streets to embrace Copenhagen’s bone chilling winter.  February Noma meals are miraculously conceived outdoors; natural bounties harvested, pickled, smoked, or dried in step with a harsh Scandinavian winter calendar. Only then are they skillfully nurtured into a series of intellectually compelling courses [...]

Noma is Copenhagen, Copenhagen is Noma. They are intertwined the way musicians reflect root and spontaneous influences. For us, we are in the middle of both; five days of frosty, windswept, Nordic Copenhagen and two meals at its geographic mirror called Noma.  All of it feels severe and subtle, cozy and edgy, intellectual yet simple, [...]

While food and wine still do not rank as keywords for Amsterdam’s travel websites, it is time to cut the canal city some slack. Visiting Amsterdam as a young man in the 1980′s and 90′s conjured immersive travel images of great contrast to the Amsterdam we experienced this weekend.  While our first day was reserved for [...]

Wine stemware was conspicuously absent at AKA Bistro’s sake and French cuisine dinner. On the table in front of me, next to a flask-like tokkuuri, were wood box masu, some kiki choko beaming their bottom-of-the-cup targets, and a flat ceremonial sakazuki drinking vessel. Of course, I would know little about any of this crystal-trumping nomenclature without the help of [...]

It is easy to turn your back on wine media around Thanksgiving. Hundreds of wine and food writers boldly recommend thousands of wines to pair with millions of holiday ingredient and flavor tapestries. It all looks as delusional as amusement park revelers wagering on spinning arcade lottery wheels; the odds say your instincts for picking [...]

Is there hope for wine becoming a tightly woven staple inside the fabric of all meals; consumed sans any hint of pomp and circumstance? While the prospect is mesmerizing, it feels more countercultural than any of my 1970′s teenage years ever did. Can Americans honestly aspire to adopt a European wine-as-food lifestyle? Or, is the thought [...]

It is apparently fine to drink pretty wine with ugly food.  Combining **** $30 2008 Cos Cerasuolo di Vittoria with home made halibut ravioli proved that out.  Just back from Alaska with sixty pounds of halibut and lingcod fillets in tow, the flavorful white fish has been figuring into meal after meal.  As deliciously addictive as fish [...]