January 2010
Ruminations after a week and a half in the islands
Posted: Jan 29, 2010 12:00am ET
Wine Spectator editor at large Harvey Steiman looks back on his winter 2010 vacation in Hawaii and recalls the vastly improved culinary scenes on the Big Island and Maui.
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Why it's more fun to sample wine than coffee
Posted: Jan 25, 2010 12:00am ET
With wine tasting, it's a simple three-step process. Look at the color. Then swirl the wine in the glass and take a sniff or two. Finally take a sip and slurp some air over it, before spitting or swallowing. With coffee, you smell in three different stages before you take a spoonful and taste. And believe me, what's in the cup is not what you want to drink with breakfast.
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A Californian works to upgrade Kona coffee
Posted: Jan 19, 2010 5:29am ET
There are more parallels than you might think between winegrowing and the growing and roasting of coffee, as a visit with a cutting-edge coffee grower in Kona, Hawaii shows. Like vintners, coffee estates try to push the envelope on quality.
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A raft of bottlings from a New Zealand winery
Posted: Jan 15, 2010 10:01am ET
Wine Spectator editor at large Harvey Steiman asks if 11 single-vineyard Sauvignon Blancs is too much for a winery to produce, especially if it also makes three other Sauvignon bottlings?
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But not everything is tutto bene
Posted: Jan 13, 2010 12:29pm ET
Last night, my colleague James Laube and I dropped in on the most recent addition to the growing collection of Italian restaurants in Napa. Cantinetta Piero opened in November, part of the new Hotel Luca. Hotelier David Fink, who has Auberge Carmel, Bouchée and Luca in Carmel, all of which have earned big plaudits for their food, installed Christopher Vacca as chef de cuisine at Piero. His credits include stints in Washington, D.C., with Mark Miller at Red Sage and Jean-Louis Palladin at the Watergate, and in New York at David Burke and Park Avenue Cafe.
Unfortunately, it was the most disappointing meal I’ve had in Napa Valley in years.
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Maker of Yellow Tail joins the chorus
Posted: Jan 11, 2010 1:28pm ET
Facing a wine glut that may reach as much as 40 million cases, Australian vintners are saying it’s time to pull out those extra vines, and the industry needs to make some hard choices to get it done.
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Place your bets: 1978 Lynch-Bages, 1981 Ridge or 2002 Bonneville?
Posted: Jan 4, 2010 2:50pm ET
Harvey Steiman finds that dinner with older wines offers some lessons in what happens with aged bottles, some good and some not.
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