New England Brewing Tales
Several of these breweries only recently entered the Massachusetts marketplace and each is striving to get its story out there. FOR THIS Six-pack of Local Breweries, I visit one-man operations, contract breweries, and some small craft breweries. Each of the breweries profiled here is distinctive, either for focusing on a... Read More
Tom Schmeisser
TOM SCHEISSER • Chief Wine Buyer • Marty’s Liquors • Newton & Allston, MA Tom Schmeisser is a front-running candidate for best-known and best-liked wine professional in Massachusetts. Tom has been the chief wine buyer at Marty’s (Newton and Allston) for 35 years, and has been a strong factor in... Read More
Designing A Wine List
The wine list is the primary venue for those of us in restaurants to showcase our wares to our clients. And with the evolution of modern technology, the internet has also given retailers the ability to create wine lists as well, via websites or computers kiosks in their stores. With... Read More
Mendoza’s Melbecs
Wines of Argentina’s press junket to Mendoza and Patagonia leaves a lingering memory and taste: that of the food-friendly and flavorful Malbec. At nearly every winery the tasting presentation is methodical, thoughtful, well-paced, considerate, intelligent, hospitable, earnest yet pleasant, and generally convincing – and the star of the show is... Read More
Good Luck Jim Tye
The role as ambassador for United Liquors is certainly not a new one for Jim Tye. With his ‘retirement’, that role is just a little more expanded, as he will be casting a wider if more informal net. Tye, a graduate of University of Miami and Columbia University School of... Read More
Oregon Pinot Gris
It’s not exactly news that Pinot Grigio is and has been the ascending star in the white wine business. What’s interesting is how little of its mass appeal has spilled over into that other rendition of the grape labeled Pinot Gris, which remains somewhat of a secret outside of the... Read More
Porters and Stouts
Then I grew up and had a beer, and ran into porters and stouts. The relationships of these beers makes for one very, very messy Venn diagram, with more circles than a UFO nut’s cornfield, a lot of scratched-out lines and erasures, and some really odd intersections. Porter definitely came... Read More
Riccetelli and Lopez
Master and apprentice, behemoth and beauty, yin and yang: two complementary personalities and temperaments make this newly formed team creating wine at Bodega Norton. The winery was founded by Edmund James Palmer Norton, an English engineer who’d come to Argentina to help in the gargantuan task of building the Transandean... Read More
Pairing the Unpairable
As restaurateurs and retail proprietors, one of the many questions we are frequently asked by our clients is about food and wine pairings. Many times the questions are about easy pairings that follow the old rules of red wine with meat and white with fish. When this rule was coined,... Read More