Ah Ha! A Newbie’s Wine List or: How I Managed to Post Twice in One Day
In March of this year, Josh Galliano and I dined at the Niche bar together. Throughout our meal customers of Niche, who were also customers of Monarch’s, regularly came up to say hello. To my great fortune, a particularly generous customer added to his hello a bottle of 2004 Williams Selyem Westside Road Neighbors Pinot Noir and with that, my Ah Ha wine moment had happened, and a new chapter of my life began. Thanks Jeff L.
Certainly I’d had good wine before, and I definitely preferred it as my libation of choice with a meal. Outside of restaurants, however, I’d been primarily a beer drinker because I could not only wrap my head around beer, I could afford it. I had no idea what Williams Selyem was that night and, if the wallop of flavor were any indicator, I was pretty damn sure it was a winery producing a product well outside my price range. Arriving home and doing a bit of googling, however, I found a bottle at Brown Derby, in Springfield, MO, for $55. While I realize that’s not cheap by any means, it was significantly less than I’d anticipated, and I immediately purchased it and two other bottles of Williams Selyem Zinfandel to tuck away into my cellar (AKA the cool/dark corner of my basement).
The slippery slope of oenophilia had landed and, where once I was a guy that simply knew he liked wine more than beer but felt he couldn’t afford it, I quickly became a guy that reads a dozen wine blogs a day and voraciously clamors for information. Which brings us, windingly, to my poorly written point: One of those posts was written by Stephen Schenkenberg on stlmag.com about his favorite wine books and websites. It’s a good list but, as a newcomer to this world of wine, I thought I’d offer up a newbie’s perspective (which you can read here in it’s shiny-new polite form, or as an stlmag comment in it’s original, several glasses in, grammatically incorrect–but possibly more entertaining–form)
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Tags: blog, books, cellartracker.com, drvino.com, erobertparker.com, Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson, Jay Miller, Josh Galliano, Kevin Zraly, Mark Oldman, Niche, Robert Parker, Tom Stevenson, Tyler Colman, vinography.com, websites, Williams Selyem, winespectator.com
Chef Blogging
Mar 12, 2008 chefs
In the LA Times today, beneath a picture of Traci des Jardins rocking it out in her kitchen on a Panasonic TOUGHBOOK (which proves she makes more money than me), is an article about chefs and their foray into territory so many have publicly criticized: blogging.
I was surprised by how many of the blogs mentioned I actually read, and it’s nice to see an article talk about the good things that happen when technology is embraced rather than only the negatives of anonymous blogging.
New Media is practically free for anyone, and what these and other chefs have realized, is that putting a familiar face and personality to their business only helps to address the public directly in a personal way while fostering their excitement for the things they’re up to in their restaurants.
The only thing I’d disagree with is the author’s comment that “this revolution is not being indexed” because it’s totally being indexed and most of us call it Google. That’s how I found Line Cook; my favorite industry blog because it’s from a San Francisco cook living in the trenches rather than amazingly well equipped personal chefs with Pacojets in their homes.
So the question is: what if any St. Louis chefs blog? And if you don’t but want to, email me.
Mario Batali Blogs
Oct 26, 2007 chefs
| I don’t think anybody has really spotted this yet, but Mario Batali started a blog recently. I ran across it initially when there wasn’t a single post, but figured I’d slap it in the RSS feeds to see what might turn up. September 30th one post did show, and then nothing again until today when three posts popped up in succession.
They are completely stream of consciousness ramblings. I can’t say I saw that one coming even if I did read Heat — which by the way you should read because it’s one of the best culinary memoirs ever. |
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— which by the way you should read because it’s one of the best culinary memoirs ever.Tags: blog, Mario Batali, stream of consciousness
From the mountains of Panama and Ethiopia, to the urban-jungles of Portland and Chicago, journalist Michaele Weissman takes us behind the scenes for a look at the world of third-wave specialty coffee. How did we get to Starbucks, and where we go from here?