As Old Man Winter blows  snow and wind across our paths and we nestle in during the quiet dark nights, one drink is certain to warm our bones, clear our colds  and put a little fire in our bellies: the hot toddy. January 11 is National Hot Toddy Day. While I grew up sipping toddies as a youngster under the guise of “clearing up a cold,” as an adult I had little time to think about toddies.  My mind and taste buds drifted off into the vineyards and wine. But the wrath of this year’s winter has had me yearning […]

Unlike Thanksgiving, where the menu, since it never really changes, is known well in advance and the process of selecting what to drink with it is something that can be done fairly easily; Christmas Dinner, and it’s accompanying wine selection, tends to be a bit of a struggle for most. This is due in no small part because there are many possible traditional dishes, particularly entrees, to choose from. Duck, Goose, Pheasant, Capon (that poor rooster…), Crown Roast of Beef, Venison, all come to mind. Turkey, at least in my household, thankfully does not. So, what to do when presented […]

 I’m at sitting at the end of a long, elegantly attired communal table eating dinner with my fingers and  drinking some very good Mumm champagne. What’s more, I am sitting in a Jewish delicatessen just  north of  Manhattan’s Lower East Side eating an assortment of shellfish dishes from oysters on the half  shell and  pickled shrimp to  lobster salad and beet cured scallop. So trés treif!  So deliciously decadent with all the slurping, sipping and licking of the fingers after each    course without the structure of forks, knives and spoons. And so thankful the organizers gave us all    hot towels to […]

With Thanksgiving season upon us, many tend to stress out over the elaborate meal about to be consumed – “Do I wet-brine or dry-brine the turkey? Do I brine the turkey at all? How big a turkey? What sides should I serve? What’s a Parsnip, and who named it that? In what grocery store aisle does one actually find those little fried onion pieces that get sprinkled over the green bean casserole? What exactly IS a green bean casserole? And then there’s the wine selection. The last thing one really needs to worry about when heading to town to buy […]

  “There is a place in the middle of the wine-dark sea called Crete, a lovely, fruitful land… “ So wrote Homer in The Odyssey when tasked with describing the   Mediterranean island that is home to a civilization that dates back longer than any other in Europe. And while it is unknown as to whether Homer, who was from the Island of Chios in the eastern Aegean, ever set foot on Crete, his description at least is accurate when linking the island with the words “fruitful” and “wine.” For Crete is indeed a fruitful place, with vast tracts of agricultural […]