Author: Stephen Meuse

I GET ASKED which alcoholic beverage first passed our greedy little lips – beer or wine. Since it’s not a case of needing to have one before you can have the other, the first-drink … Grapes, grains, and the priority puzzleRead more

SHOPPING FOR WINE IS THIRSTY WORK, so sipping an ounce or two while you scan the shelves mulling over varietals and vintages can only make an already pleasant task more enjoyable. … Not to diss the sip, but . . .Read more

THE PICTURE ABOVE ISN’T some abstract expressionist art you might encounter in a Soho gallery. It’s a thermal image of a section of the North Atlantic  (Credit: NASA JPL). The warm Gulf … Wine as signRead more

THAT’S STANLEY TUCCI (left) and Anthony Shaloub as a pair of devoted but mismatched brothers running an Italian restaurant in the film Big Night. Primo (Shaloub) is a gifted chef who … When food satisfies – and when it doesn’tRead more

THIS FOURTEENTH CENTURY manuscript illumination shows just-picked grapes being hustled from the vineyard and dumped into vats where empurpled treaders are already frantically at work.  It was customary for medieval artists … Please Have Snow and Mistletoe and Claret under the Tree . . . .Read more

PACKING UP A CASE of wine for a Central Bottle guest recently, I reached back in to re-arrange a pair of wines so that the Argyros Santorini Assyrtiko wasn’t adjacent the … Austerity measures</br>Read more

IF ANYTHING CAN BE SAID to be genuinely innate about human taste it’s our appreciation and enjoyment of the flavors of ripe fruit. We came down from the trees already addicts … Rocks in our wine,<br/>or just in our heads?Read more

EMILE ZOLA’S 1873 novel Le ventre de Paris (‘The Belly of Paris’) opens with a pre-dawn parade of horse-drawn carts laden with produce making their way to Les Halles, the city’s great public … Wine and the city</br>Read more

VINTNERS WITH PROPERTY in the steep hillsides that overlook the Mosel River between Trier and Koblenz have a worldwide market for their cooly aromatic, austerely-structured white wines.  Today, growers there can … In Karl Marx’s youthful and spirited defense of Mosel wine-growers the foretaste of a revolutionary careerRead more

CAMDEN VALLEY ROAD runs east-west from Sandgate, Vermont across the state line into Washington County, New York.   It’s a winding, two-lane country road with hardly any traffic on it, and it’s partially … <span class="entry-title-primary">Historic embrace</span> <span class="entry-subtitle">The love affair between tree and vine goes way back. Here's their story.</span>Read more

Decanting wine conjures visions of cobwebby bottles, guttering candles, crystal goblets, and white-gloved butlers. Performed primarily to relieve wines of sediment, the technique that’s known as the soft decant once involved … Gimme air!Read more

The hip, cozy watering hole known as Backbar occupies a back room of  Journeyman restaurant in the scrappy Boston satellite city of Somerville.  With its usual team of  cocktail jockeys off … Field blends have something to say, but is anyone listening?Read more