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There’s just something about the name “Persia” that seduces us. We are drawn to the flavors and aromas. Mint, cumin, cinnamon, oranges, pomegranates, dates and honey are ingredients we like add to many of our everyday dishes. Aside from Melanie’s coming of age tour to Israel as a teenager, we’ve only traveled to the Middle ...

It seemed like the perfect plan: Help out Barossa Valley grape growers unable to sell their fruit in a changing market by making wine from their grapes, sell it off in bulk to those who need wine to sell and go play golf for the rest of the year. Well, something like that, anyways… A ...

    She’s called “The First Lady of Tequila” and is the first female “Maestra Tequila” certified by the Academia Mexicana de Catadores de Tequila. And she makes a pretty amazing tequila called Casa Dragones. After years building the Cuervo brand globally, Bertha Gonzáles Nieves stepped out in 2009 to create her own style of tequila ...

There’s probably nobody in the world today with a better handle on the pulse of the whisky industry than Dave Pickerell.   A veteran of the industry, Dave has spent a career moving the craft of making whisky forward through his knowledge and expertise in distilling. First at Makers Mark, where as Master Distiller for ...

A lot of people yearn to get into the wine business, where aside from the pretty hard work (winemaking is not romantic, only drinking wine is), a life of good food, good wine, travel, and mostly beautiful surroundings carry the day, pretty much every day. It’s rare, however, to find someone who leaves it. Carta ...

    South Africa has a winemaking industry that dates back to the 1600s, and the Malan family, whose Simonsig Wine Estate in that country’s renowned Stellenbosch region in the Cape Winelands is one of the most recognized names in the world of wine, helped create it. Grape growers in South Africa since Jacques Malan ...

  Think about this fact: every minute, 18 bottles of Sandeman wine are sold. That’s just under 26,000 bottles per day, or somewhere north of 9 million bottles per year. One of the truly iconic names in the world of wine, the Sandeman family started trading in Port and Sherry in 1790 and is considered one ...

Restaurants come (and go) at a pretty fast clip in New York City, one of the world’s great dining capitals. Some do so without much fanfare, some do so with lots of it. Betony, which opened in 2013 in midtown Manhattan, is one of the latter. The brainchild of Chef Bryce Shuman and partner Eamon ...

With a six generation legacy of  growing grapes and making wine, the Undurraga family has been at the forefront of fine wine production in Chile since the 1880s. Undoubtedly one of that country’s most famous wine making families, they have a number of firsts in their lengthy list of accomplishments, not the least of which ...

With almost two dozen restaurants scattered throughout the U.S., Bermuda, and across Scandinavia, a handful of cookbooks, and a growing list of media and philanthropic interests, Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s reach in the culinary world crosses multi-cultural boundaries Born in Ethiopia, adopted and raised in Sweden, from an early age Marcus was taught to appreciate and respect food ...

If you’ve had the good fortune to go out to The Hamptons on Long Island’s East End recently, you’ve most likely had one of Roman Roth’s wines. As winemaker at the celebrated Wölffer Estate Vineyard whose deliciously pale and dry Rosé is a Hamptons restaurant and Summer party staple, Roman has been a leader in the Long Island ...

Though the profession of wine making has had a fairly large contingent of women at the helm for decades, the spirits making game has long been male dominated, and it’s only recently that women have started turn their eye towards running a still. And, while we may be able to only count female distillers on ...

Long thought of as a two brand country when it came to whiskey – those brands being Bushmills and Jameson (and we’ll leave religion out of it, here, because I’ve always believed in the separation of  Church and Still) – the Emerald Isle actually has close to 100 different whiskies in distribution around the world, and while not ...

While doing our research for Our March 16th radio show, we learned that the traditional St. Patrick’s day dish of corned beef and cabbage is really a Jewish specialty. New York City’s Irish working class  frequented nearby Jewish delis and food carts. Corned beef and cabbage was a flavorful and cheaper alternative to Irish bacon and ...

You asked. We listened! We’re excited to announce The Connected Table® Sips on iHeart.com, our podcast series to provide more ways to spotlight people, brands and initiatives in the industry separately from our live show. The five minute podcasts are recorded, and guests can call in from anywhere in the world. They can be used for ...

To be honest, we had to look up Tutka Bay on the map. FYI: it’s in Alaska. That said, it was with pleasure that we did so. For when “The Tutka Bay Lodge Cookbook” came across our desk and we started flipping through the pages of this wonderful tome, we knew that not only did ...

Daniel Boulud may not know it, but he is responsible for our marriage. Well, at least in part. Here’s the skinny: After meeting Melanie at a dinner party thrown by my ex-girlfriend (long story) and vowing to stay in touch, we got together for our first date in February 2003. It went something like this: ...

Restaurants will score well this week starting with Super Bowl Sunday February 7 and ending with Valentine’s Day February 14 with Chinese New Year (starts Feb. 8) and Mardi Gras (culminating Feb. 9) in between. A few statistics we found: On Super Bowl Sunday Americans will consume 1.3 billion chicken wings 278 million avocados 325 million gallons ...

France is well known for producing some of the world’s best (and most famous and expensive) wines. Yet, it is also known for producing some of the world’s greatest brandies, most notably Cognac, Armagnac, and Calvados, the latter being not a grape spirit, but one made from either apples or pears. For grape-based brandies, Cognac and ...

Sometimes, if your name is on a product, you’ll do anything to make sure you own it. That’s certainly the case with Champagne Taittinger, the venerable producer of one of the world’s most sought after sparkling wines who famously in 2005 lost their interest in the family winery only to buy it back in 2007 ...

When your wine is called Isolation Ridge, it’s a pretty sure bet that getting to where its made will probably include a lot of driving, and not necessarily on major roads. Of course, once one leaves the relatively few major cities on the world’s smallest Continent, that can be said for much of Australia. That ...

As the revival of cocktail culture has seen its bloom blossom over the last decade, and more and more people have hopped on the bandwagon to learn about, and make cocktails, one of the people they have turned to to help educate themselves has been Southern Wine and Spirits of New York Director of Spirits ...

Over the years, the name Banfi has become one of the top names when talking about Italian wines. Yet, Banfi Vintners, founded in 1919 by John Mariani, and now run by third generation family members Cristina Mariani-May and her cousin James, is actually an American company, started right in New York City. So how did ...

New York City has seen its fair share of vegetarian restaurants over the years, like Zen Palate, Blossom, Candle Cafe and Angelica Kitchen, but none have ever garnered the accolades that Amanda Cohen’s Dirt Candy has. Opened in 2008 with only 18 seats, Dirt Candy wasn’t just a fresh look at how to create a meat ...

Some people crave chocolate. Others love smoky bacon. Admittedly, I go weak at the knees over cheese. My love for cheese is so intense that at home David often hides the cheese from me. Once I start slathering a runny Camembert over toasted pieces of baguette, slivering Stilton to pair with my pears, putting slices of ...

Wandering through the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City, you’ll discover a stand with a range of international breads made by a community of women who work at Hot Bread Kitchen in East Harlem. Hot Bread Kitchen is more than just baking great breads. It’s about building lives, fighting poverty and changing the food landscape. This ...

Count on one hand the ambassadors of Southern Cuisine, and Award-winning writer, chef, TV personality, and cookbook author Virginia Willis will invariably own one of those five fingers. Georgia-born and French-trained, Virginia has been the go-to expert for such chefs and lifestyle experts as Bobby Flay, Paula Deen, and Martha Stewart, and has appeared on numerous ...

When the cold or flu hits me (as it did last October), I crave a warm Toddy. By definition a Toddy is a hot drink of  whiskey, sugar and water. But in the right hands, it is much more. It’s hot magic in a glass. According to cocktail historian and author, Dave Wondrich, the Toddy originated ...

Remember that college mantra  “beer makes you smarter?” Memory hint: it was usually uttered by someone with beer goggles on. We did a little research asking if drinking beer made you smarter. A 2012 study at Oregon State University reported that xanthohumol in hops, a main ingredient in beer, has been found to increase brain function in high ...

Long before there were any “women and wine” organizations or symposiums and back when the wine trade was a man’s world there was one woman whose voice stood out: Roberta Morrell. You can’t miss that voice. Roberta is a force to be reckoned with whose tenure in the wine industry spans 30 years as President and ...