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News Laws; More Wine, Less Whining

Jul 1

Posted by admin in alcohol, champagne, food, food universe, news, tourism, wine | No Comments

Big news on the wine front: “Ship it” is the phrase of the new month. Maryland now allows residents to receive wine shipments from out-of-state wineries. No longer do DC workers have to use their office addresses for wine shipments. Hello; that’s progress. Yet, the state is ready to boost its coffers with new tax initiatives that hit the bottle hard. Alcohol tax increases amount to a 50% sales hike. That should slow down the tab.

Virginia joins the customer-friendly philosophy by allowing consumers to BYOW, bring their own wine to restaurants and pay a corkage fee. Just one common courtesy here: Don’t bring something that is already on the restaurant’s wine list. You want to keep the restaurant in business and not add to their operating cost burden.

Maybe my favorite legislative enactment is from Maryland which requires food purveyors, farm markets, and grocers to define what those “local” signs really mean. This word has had a true liberal dosing of meaning. Big banners often proclaim local only to learn that one store’s definition involves hundreds of miles while one really means the nearby grower. The law applies to fruits, vegetables, fish, and shellfish by requiring a defined point of origin. Let’s keep those signs accurate and support the true definition of local.

Oregon’s wine industry, with its much hearalded 2008 Pinot Noir accolades, just got an additional boost. License plates can now advertise wine country which should boost sales for the entire tourism industry. Why not tag something so impressive!

Celebrate the red, white, and blue by toasting these impressive legislative enactments. OK, one is costly (a 9% alcohol sales tax), but it may help the coffers in a responsible way.

Enjoy the 4th.

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Wine Limits

May 2

Posted by admin in alcohol, health, wine | No Comments

OK, now that I have your attention and your anxiety has been elevated to that of attention-getting, what’s all the talk about limiting wine consumption? Turns out according to a report from the American Heart Association that there’s been a tendency to overdrink red wine! I know, it’s shocking!

Seems that all the good news about how red wine can help drive good heart-healthy numbers had respondents saying they consumed many more than the recommended two drinks a day limit. After all, if one glass works, why not enjoy yourself and indulge seems to be the thread. Overdrinking or over indulging leads to other issues and seems to negate the wine benefit! Of the 1,000 adults polled, only 30% knew there were limits to consumption. Really! How odd, limits!

The limits get narrowed into discernible amounts: Two (4-ounce) drinks for men on a daily basis and one for women. Drinking in greater quantities may diminish the heart-healthy benefits and increase blood pressure. Did I mention obesity?

Wine studies can be rather comical as a recent one acknowledged wine drinkers with multiple, as in 4-5 drinks daily, had fewer tremors as they aged. Call me cynical but regular daily consumption in that quantity may make one wonder if they were able to recognize a tremor as their consumption level was so significant!

I like a study that favors wine consumption as much as the next vinophile, but excess is excess. You’ll know by morning!

Common sense should play a role in any of our food or beverage decisions. It is hard to believe we need a study to confirm that there are negative risks to overindulgence!

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The Healthy Cups of Coffee

Mar 11

Posted by admin in beverages, coffee, health, lifestyle, wine | No Comments

As with wine, my favorite finds are the health articles that discuss the benefits from the beverages. Today is no exception. The latest study from Sweden reports on the beneficial effects from drinking more than a single cup of coffee daily. The focus is on women without a history of cardiovascular disease. Findings clearly support a 22 to 25% reduction in the possibility of having a stroke. The lead researchers followed more than 30,000 women (from 49 to 83 years old) for 10 years. The single nor occasional cup does not produce these results.

It should be noted that the research indicates that women who do not drink coffee or have very limited coffee consumption are more likely to have a stroke. Other factors such as smoking, weight, and alcohol consumption did not affect the overall benefit women gain from daily, multiple cups of coffee. Researchers did not separate out the caffeinated from the decaffeinated drinkers, but Sweden is well known for its strong coffee brews so the authors doubt the number of decaf drinkers would significantly affect the data.

This study follows on the heels of an earlier one from Israel (The Heart Institute of Sheba) that found that 3 cups of coffee a day is good for you and protects against heart attacks and is good for the circulatory system. What is interesting about this study’s findings is that both individuals who have suffered heart conditions and those free of disease benefited from the caffeine dosage. People who have shied away from coffee for fear of a spike in their blood pressure and pulse rate might start to enjoy those multiple cups.

These studies support my overall philosophy that coffee has strong benefits and that days of diminished consumption help no one, especially those with whom you come into contact! Keep healthy, enjoy good coffee in beautiful cups.illyrehberger_143x130

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Valentine’s Day: Special Panic Alert

Jan 21

Posted by admin in food universe, lifestyle, wine | No Comments

The signs, regardless of which Zodiac you follow, are already in place: Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. What makes this year’s an extra special, as in contentious, event is the fact that the 14th falls on a Monday. That translates into a weekend of Valentine’s Day events and special menus. For many that means more crowded dining rooms and menus limited to Prix Fixe special love meals.

Now I have nothing against the prix fixe concept as I often find it is the best approach to dining. That’s especially true during the numerous restaurant week promotions as they are based on the multi-course approach to affordable dining. My complaint is with the natural crowd-fillers such as Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day. They are both dining out experiences that can involve overcrowded dining rooms and harassed wait staff.

Nor do I have anything against a Love Menu. My complaint is quite simple: Diners should be able to dine from the entire menu, not just the highly tailored one. After all a diner has chosen a particular restaurant for its particular food, its menu of choices. There should be no surprises for the diner as in “you mean tonight you are not offering the house specialty?” Everyone who makes a reservation needs to know in advance if the restaurant has limited its menu selection! That is only fair.

So many restaurants have created these special menus for crowd management purposes or simply translated, to accommodate the anticipated large crowd. A kitchen cannot handle everyone’s special request as Valentine’s Day often is all about special requests.

Now you have two choices, probably more, but two will suffice. You can buy (or carry-in) that wonderful piece of fish or meat, a beautiful drusian_prosecco_superiore_di_cartizze_thumbbottle of wine, OK, start with a sparkler, and a fabulous dessert. You can eat in and save your special restaurant for a night that promises to be less crowded. Or, you can find a restaurant that is offering its entire menu, one that lets you choose your special delicacy.

Some critics say Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day menus are for amateurs. You decide.

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Popsicles and More-

Oct 27

Posted by admin in gluten-free, healthy eating, lifestyle, news, wine | No Comments

I know it feels like winter is nudging us to bundle up, but some food trends are seasonless. As we noted with the recent first look at food and beverage trends, some ideas are follow-ups to last year’s scouting reports. Take popsicles, for instance, although just saying the word sends a chill down my bundled up body, we saw grocers and restaurants play with the concept with all types of creative flavors. Let’s continue with the Baum & Whiteman trend list and see their thoughts for this coming year.

–Popsicles going global and artisan–and what it means. We have to give the company credit for talking about this in their 2008 trend report even though we didn’t see the concept move from niche market space until this past year with an assortment of fruit-filled Mexican icepops (paletas) in fun flavors. So what’s next? They predict that flavors will continue to intensify just as cocktails did this year and that more of these specialty pop shops will appear as they introduce customers to more flavors with texture.paletas-su-682708-l

–Making Customers Unwelcome. That’s a strange category for a company whose business depends on helping restaurants thrive. Yet we’ve already seen signs of this trend with restaurants accepting reservations with a time limit as in “we have another party that needs that table within an hour and a half.” Or the corollary, the no reservation policy. New York was always the home of the No Credit Card sign, but that trend has proliferated as has the expanded wine by the glass list at skyrocketed prices.

–How Does Your Garden Grow, Mrs. Obama? Good question as First Lady Michelle Obama has made us all more farm market conscious and chefs have joined the grow your own concept, but many fast food restaurants translated healthy with using fresh foods but driving up the calorie count with ingredients such as gobs of cheese. Expect to see more chef gardens, more chefs helping in the schools, and an even greater emphasis on local. It seems no matter where you travel, you see signs asking customers to support local growers and businesses. A smart move.

–Breakfast All the Time.  When the economy was at its lowest levels, the food treat was breakfast food and breakfast business boomed. More restaurants expanded breakfast menus and all-day breakfast became more prevalent. Now, Baum and Whiteman believe we’ll see certain foods jump to a more mainstream position such as soft, slow-cooked eggs. This is an opportunity for high-end restaurants to skip the sauce and top the expensive dish with an egg which oozes its own sauce.

–Grits. They say grits will “leap from a morning food to an all-purpose starch.” Not only are we already seeing more grits on menus, we see restaurants such as Bubby’s in New York tout where their special grits come from (South Carolina). The consultants believe that the Southern food influence will spread and they even speculate that shrimp and grits will become the food of the year!

Other trends they note are some we have already seen: A rise in gluten-free foods, more healthy menus that denote less sodium or no high fructose corn syrup. They call this category “free-from” foods. So many more concepts. Here’s a little teaser:

Wife-swapping. Check back to find out how Baum and Whiteman relate that category to restaurants!

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Raise A Glass; Let’s Toast Wine

Apr 9

Posted by admin in Pairings, wine | No Comments

There’s so much wonderful wine news that it seems like a perfect weekend activity: Find a glass you like, open a bottle, and enjoy the bouquet of mouthful flavors.

Name a state in the US, and you’ll have no problem finding a wine. Many continue to amaze and threaten the once imperial leadership from CA and other West Coast states. No more.

Name a country, and you’ll find lots of competition to the wine regions of France and Italy that have so dominated the international marketplace for so long.

Let’s play the game.events1

Find a wine shop you like; they most likely have weekend wine tastings (Many have added after work tastings and offer numerous price discounts). Sign up for their preferred customer list, AKA, give them your email address! Support wine shops that have stock beyond the ordinary. Many new shops have opened throughout the country that pride themselves on stocking the lesser known, often called the second brand of the big houses, and many smaller, lesser known wineries. Of course, when you travel, consider sampling the local wines of the area, the state. You may surprise yourself.

Follow a wine trail. You do not have to limit that excursion to West Coast states. Look at Virginia, a state which has been grabbing headlines for its selection and quality of product. Each area of  Virginia, for instance, has a terroir trail specific to its region or county.  If you find a group of friends to accompany you, consider a car service or at least a designated driver as sampling is such a major part of the excursion.

Let no one spill your fun. Wine tastes are personal. Not everyone will like the same wines nor the same wines with the same foods. Pairing can prove challenging, but again your individual palate impacts the end result. Try, sample, and compare. Your tastebuds will tell you if you have a match.

Throw out the rules. Enjoy the wine and explore beyond the big names.

You’ll be pleased.

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A Wine Solution

Apr 7

Posted by admin in Environment, news, wine | No Comments

corkreharvest_org_partner_sign_tnOK, time to fess up: You have a drawer full of wine corks. You’re planning to do a creative art project with them but that seems more unlikely with each bottle you open. Wouldn’t it be nice to gain that drawer space back? Hold off, don’t toss: Recycle. Now in addition to bringing your plastic bags back to the grocers and carrying in your reusable bags, you can take your wine corks to Whole Foods.

Where are all these corks going? Whole Foods will ship them to different vendors who will turn them into new consumer products such as cork floor tiles. Don’t try that one at home!

In a recycling program that began as a pilot test in the Oregon markets, the company has expanded its trial and partnered with Cork ReHarvest to let customers at all their stores properly deposit wine corks. With over 13 billion natural corks produced annually, this system will help reduce the demand on cork plantations and help maintain the ecosystem of the Mediterranean forests.

Here are some interesting cork facts (and reasons to recycle) from Cork ReHarvest:

–Cork is a 100% natural, renewable, recyclable, and biodegradable material.

–Trees are not cut down to get cork but rather the bark is stripped by hand every 9-12 years.

–There is enough cork in the cork forests of Portugal and Spain to last more than 100 years.

Thus we have two dilemmas at once: Many bottlers have switched to plastic stoppers which may prove more difficult to recycle and are possibly not biodegradable. (We already know that the plastic stopper does not easily fit back into the bottle for storage). Second, what happens to the art project? Go get paper and draw. In the meantime, head out with your bagful of corks.

Thanks to Whole Foods’s newest partner that process has become easier and sustainable.

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Love is in the Air: One Month Warning

Jan 14

Posted by admin in chocolate, coffee, wine | No Comments

At least merchants who believe in fairy tales have their windows and aisles all gussied up for an event that is four weeks from today. OK, don’t panic. The all-American lovefest, commonly known as Valentine’s Day, has become a major marketing opportunity for retail, grocers, and restaurants. Also anybody else you can think of, like those little Girl Scouts who are already out hawking their yummy cookies.

Besides the giant heart-shaped boxes of candy, this is the year you might consider designing your own specialized candy bar for your love. The German company Chocri has figured out that Americans, too, have a sweet tooth and are offering us the opportunity to personalize a chocolate gift with Fair Trade, organic, Belgium chocolate. This has real possibilities, especially the Marzipan rose!marzipan

There’s also time to go the personalized M&M route, and the almost limitless array of other candies already dolled up in special V-Day boxes. Sweet choices.

Besides chocolate, which I have few complaints about unless it is milk chocolate rather than higher concentrations of cocoa, there are other wonderful food and beverage options. How about coffee or tea? Plenty of those already packaged up and ready to go. Don’t forget wine–so many choices. So many winning opportunities: Maybe this is the time of the year to think of a wine club, a lovely possibility!

Or just purchase a special wine for the final touch to a beautiful evening. How about a Late Harvest Riesling or a true Ice Wine to warm your spirit.

So many wonderful food choices for a special Valentine’s Day.

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An Excuse To Celebrate: Beaujolais Nouveau

Nov 18

Posted by admin in news, Pairings, wine | No Comments

Most every wine writer worth his glass will say skip tomorrow’s marketing jubilee: Beaujolais Nouveau C’est Arrive. They say, avoid the hype and spend your beverage dollars on wonderful bottles of Beaujolais that lend themselves to any meal year-round.

The traditional 3rd Thursday of November Beaujolais Nouveau event has become an opportunity for liquor stores and restaurants to celebrate with a pour, special pairings, and the hope that this year’s young crop may be better than in some previous years. Always dicey but for those who can’t imagine skipping a toast, a pour, or a traditional event, then tomorrow is your day.

By French law and now anticipated tradition, the young, fruity, light wine of the Gamay grape cannot be poured until 12:01 AM on that 3rd Thursday of the month, or exactly one week before the great food holiday, Thanksgiving. One of the big names in the Beaujolais region is Georges Duboeuf, and his Nouveau label has become as pervasive as this mini-celebration. For true traditionalists, his best Beaujolais Nouveau years have ended in the 9′s so get ready to enjoy the 2009.

Stores will be ready for tastings tomorrow. Then you can decide how much of a traditionalist you are.

If you’re thinking of a restaurant to try the wine or to celebrate its annual release, then consider one of the many French restaurants that participate in such an event. (Mon Ami Gabi is one national company that has plans for the evening, and some locations have decided to turn the “Day” into a week of festivities).

If you’re in Washington, DC and you’ve always wanted to visit The French Embassy, this might be your perfect excuse. Tickets are necessary, but it is a fun way to feel transported to France for an evening of wine and food in a beautiful setting. Check with your local French-beaujolaisNouveauCelebratioAmerican Chamber of Commerce for events in your city.

A Votre Sante; Cheers.

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My Personal (Whine) Wine List

Nov 8

Posted by admin in dining out, wine | No Comments

winecartWith all the talk about dining out dos and don’ts, it’s time to think about our beverages, especially wine. In general, I think wine by the glass programs are a direct line to a restaurant’s bottom line. Restaurants make so much money on a single pour that you need to ask yourself a few questions:

–Can you order a bottle and take the unfinished amount home? That’s an option in more and more states so why pay $10 for a glass when the bottle costs $36? You may want more than one glass, but not the whole bottle. Keep the cork and ask them to pack it up. You’ll enjoy another glass tomorrow or even the next day.

–What do you know about the storage of the opened bottles that they use for the wine by the glass program? How many days ago did they open that bottle?

–The big question: You asked for Brand X Cab, are you that wine savvy that you know you are not getting Brand Y? When the restaurant does the pour at the table, you, of course, are secure with the concept, but that is more the exception than the standard. BTW, it’s a lovely process that more restaurants should adopt!

Now you’ve decided to order a bottle, and the list of issues becomes even more precious:

After the bottle has been presented, try your selection from the smidgen that was poured. Important word in that sentence: smidgen. If you give the OK, stop the server from pouring half glasses for everyone at the table. That’s too much wine. No one can swirl, and the wine cannot open. It also feels like an unpleasant push from the server showing you that the bottle is gone. Want another? Seriously.

Servers: Do not empty the bottle on the 1st pass. Show elegance with your pour; let the wine demonstrate its elegance. If you are uncomfortable pouring and are not steady, use the napkin around the bottle approach: It is a better solution than a tablecloth filled with wine spills.

If it’s a red, make sure it is not too hot. If it is, then it will need a few minutes in an ice bucket.

Restaurants: Reds should not be stored and served warm; hot. Recall phrase: Cellar Temperature. That goes for whites, too. Often they are served too cold and need to warm up before any tastes evolve.

It is OK for a guest to say, we can pour. Servers: Do not respond with the alien look that says how dare you! Diners if you prefer take charge of the wine experience. It is not difficult and it helps you pace the meal rather than discover that the wine has been emptied before the entrees arrive. Not every table wants to order multiple bottles. Wine should not be gulped, but sipped and enjoyed.

Many people say the wine glass does not matter. Sorry, I believe it does. A red likes to open up and that is difficult in a tight rimmed glass best used for a white. Basic, all-purpose wine glasses only work when the wine list consists of a few items classified as red or white. When a list has names, country of origin, and vintages those facts deserve a better glass. Do not buy a thick-rimmed glass, it is hard to get the taste over the edge.

A delicate glass, a sweet pour; an enjoyable evening.

Now on to pairing.

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