News & Features
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Travel Tips
Harvey Steiman reports on three new standouts in the Bay Area restaurant scene
Posted: May 29, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
Blogs
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Harvey Steiman At Large
Wines from the 1960s star in a retrospective dinner
Posted: May 22, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
My donation to the Central Coast Wine Auction this year included some California Cabernets from decades long past, which were contributed to a fantastic charity dinner.
I have had great bottles of mature California Cabernet Sauvignon on many occasions, but seldom a lineup as consistently rewarding and educational as this one. All eight bottles were in great condition and they perfectly represented their eras, their vineyard sources and their house styles. When you’re dealing with older wines, that’s luck.
This was the annual dinner wherein my friend Archie McLaren and I dig into our cellars for the wines to pour in a San Francisco restaurant. This time we ferreted out four California wines each, offering two from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Chef Jan Birnbaum from Epic Roasthouse in San Francisco came up with an inventive menu for the all-red wine roster.
Blogs
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Harvey Steiman At Large
Memorable food and wine, despite going (mostly) casual
Posted: May 16, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
On vacation, with stops in Paris, Lyon, Piemonte and Liguria, my wife and I mostly avoided high-profile restaurants and opted for less-expensive wines. Still we ate well and drank a satisfying array of local favorites.
Highlights included a Paul Bocuse project and the "best tajarin ever," at Trattoria Antica Torre in Barbaresco.
Blogs
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Harvey Steiman At Large
Tricky questions about "natural wines" intrude on my vacation
Posted: May 14, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
Just back from two weeks in Europe, with stops in Paris, Lyon, Piemonte and Liguria. Intentionally, I scoped out relatively modest restaurants rather than anything trendy or luxe. (More about those in a future blog.) Thus, for the most part, my encounters with food and wine were blissfully free of attitude or pretension.
I promised my wife that I would not allow work to impinge on vacation. There was, however, one notable exception, when the volatile issue of "natural wines" reared its head and I had to deal with an awkward situation. I am an agnostic on natural wines, neither insisting upon drinking them nor avoiding them. For me the issue is always how good the wine is to drink, and all the better if it offers something beyond a pleasant way to wash down dinner.
April 30, 2012 Issue
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Features
Posted: April 30, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
April 30, 2012 Issue
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Features
Posted: April 30, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
April 30, 2012 Issue
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Features
Posted: April 30, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
April 30, 2012 Issue
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Books
Posted: April 30, 2012 By Thomas Matthews, Harvey Steiman, Kim Marcus
April 30, 2012 Issue
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Features
Some vintners are seeking lower alcohol levels in their wines, pushing back against history and nature
Posted: April 30, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
Blogs
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Harvey Steiman At Large
Does it matter that self-styled experts are more sensitive to some tastes than consumers?
Posted: April 23, 2012 By Harvey Steiman
Someone could write a treatise on why some researchers seem hell-bent on proving that wine experts are full of it. The most recent is a study by John E. Hayes of Pennsylvania State University and Gary Pickering of Brock University in Ontario, Canada. Early news coverage was along the lines of "all those expert wine reviews are meaningless because most of us can't taste that stuff anyway.”
My colleague Ben O’Donnell reports on the actual paper. Having read the study, my take is that it falls in line with others of recent vintage that purport to show that experts can’t differentiate high-quality wine from rotgut, or that we always prefer a wine identified as more expensive.
