jennifer fiedler

Posted: September 6, 2012 By Jennifer Fiedler

From Sideways to Bottle Shock to A Walk in the Clouds, there are movies about wine aplenty. But could the best movie about drinking wine—like the real experience of drinking and learning about wine—actually be a surfing movie?

In the mid 1960s, filmmaker Bruce Brown took two young Californian surfers and a camera around the world, following the summer season across hemispheres in search of warm water and perfect waves. The result, Endless Summer—the documentation of their epic year-long surf trip to Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii—introduced a nation to surf adventure tourism. Forty years later, yes, parts of it are a little dated, but as a longtime surfer myself, I find it still holds up as one of the best mashnotes to surfing ever put to celluloid.

Tucked within the docu-style narration are some gem lessons about surfing and traveling and, if you look at it with the right mindset, plenty of things that apply equally to learning about wine. Watching surfing will always be more interesting than watching someone drink wine (sorry!), but if you can get in the right frame of mind, here are six scenes that transfer well.

News & Features : Dining Tips

Dining Tip: Chicken Tacos in Tomato-Chipotle Sauce

Easy Mexican dinner that pairs well with a Spanish red

Posted: September 4, 2012 By Jennifer Fiedler

Blogs : Mixed Case: Opinion and Advice

What Are the Best Wine Books for a Starter Library?

Make your top picks for essential reading

Posted: August 28, 2012 By Jennifer Fiedler

One of the best things about working at Wine Spectator is that we get advance copies of most of the wine books that come out each year. I can tell you this much: A serious amount of words are spilled on the topic per annum. Come every fall, it's tough for the editors to choose which ones make it into the book review roundup for the December 15 issue.

But when it comes to the books I recommend privately to friends who want to "get more into wine," I have a very short list of all-time favorites. Maybe it's a matter of which books I read first myself or a bias toward older books, but most of my picks have been around for a while.

Making a starter library is like making a mixtape: You need a balance of upbeat and down-tempo, of familiarity and surprise. Unless someone really wants to get academic, I generally steer clear of recommending intro-to-wine books. It's like including music scales on your 60s garage-rock mixtape; I'd rather learn from the songs themselves.

I'll share four of my favorites below, but I'm curious: Which books would you choose for a starter library?

News & Features : Matchmaking

8 & $20 Recipe: Creamy Corn Chowder with a Chardonnay

Celebrate the height of summer produce with this simple soup

Posted: August 28, 2012 By Jennifer Fiedler

News & Features : Dining Tips

Dining Tip: Chorizo and Clams

A simple, satisfying Spanish dish that pairs well with rosé

Posted: August 27, 2012 By Jennifer Fiedler

News & Features : Matchmaking

8 & $20 Recipe: Pan-Seared Pork Chops and Okra with a Portuguese Red

A side dish of okra, tomatoes and black olives stars in this easy summer meal

Posted: August 14, 2012 By Jennifer Fiedler

Blogs : Mixed Case: Opinion and Advice

Why Is Liking Wine a Character Flaw on TV?

Villains always blink their eyes; must they order fine Burgundy at dinner too?

Posted: August 9, 2012 By Jennifer Fiedler

If there’s one thing I learned from a very short-lived side career as an art director on television shows, it’s this: no prop is accidental. Which means when I watch TV and see a wine bottle, I have to wonder, what is that doing there? And what is it supposed to mean? Too often, wine (or wine appreciation) gets used as a shorthand cue for an “evil” character or some other moral deficiency and a wine bottle on screen signifies there’s about to be some evil-doing ahead—equivalent to a James Bond villain having a foreign accent and laughing maniacally. But that’s too bad, because I know plenty of non-evil wine drinkers, and I’d like to think that enjoying wine doesn’t have to be a character flaw.

With that in mind, I graded some of this season’s televisions shows on how positive their portrayal of wine drinking was on a scale from 1 (wine = evil) to 5 (wine = good). Is it really possible the Bachelor had the most positive view of wine on TV?