Kermit Lynch Wine Trade Tasting: Highlights

Some highlights:
CHAMPAGNES: J. LASSALLE: Brut Réserve sans année (NV): Pale gold, with abundant, lasting bubbles, it offers full, fresh scents of apples with a pleasant overtone of cocoa. Toasted brioche, clean, fairly rich on the pallet. Zippy acidity and apple fruit combine in a creamy flavor and long, clean finish. Grapes: Pinot Meunier, [...]

1984 Bonny Doon Sweet Muscat Crap Shoot

Grape image borrowed from: www.thewinenews.com
A few months ago my husband and I were walking on Lakeshore avenue in Oakland, CA when we decided to pop into a liquor store and browse the selections. I headed to the back and let me eyes scale every inch until a few dusty, splits on the top shelf caught [...]

High Fructose Corn Syrup

(Image borrowed from: http://www.leftoverqueen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/hfcs_no.jpg
From the Washington Post (Wednesday, January 28, 2009):
Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.
HFCS has [...]

What Milk is Available at Your Cornerstore?

A comment on one of my previous posts (about milk) raised an interesting point about product availability. At his (the contributor’s) closest food market–the corner store–Berkeley Farms milk is readily available. The person writing lives in West Oakland. He was unsure about the farming practices of Berkeley Farms dairy. I googled them, pocked around on [...]

Milk: Full Fat, Flavor and Nutrients

After reading Nina Planck’s book: Real Food: What to Eat and Why, my consumption of milk, butter and meat changed. No, I didn’t go on a diet, count my fat calories and worry about the cholesterol floating around in my egg yolks, milk cream or rib-eye steak. Quite the contrary: I embraced these things with [...]

Bordeaux: worth the hype?

Bordeaux: Perhaps one of the most famed wine regions of the world. But why? Last night we tasted 14 bottles from almost every appellation in Bordeaux. The map gives a good indication of what that includes (taken from http://www.stratsplace.com/mappics/f_bordelais.jpg).

We tasted some amazing wines. The most notable of which were the following: 1994 Leoville-Barton, 1970 Beychevelle, [...]

Gone are the bananas in my fruit bowl…

I am no longer eating bananas. Even organic ones carry such a high carbon footprint and often have a heavy social burden. By that I mean, the laborers growing the fruit are paid VERY little for their time and efforts yet we sell them in US supermarkets for .49 to 1.49 per pound. Most of [...]

Taste

Once a month a group of friends and I get together to taste wine and eat an eclectic dinner. We select a region and each buy a bottle or two from that place and bring a dish. It is an awesome way to learn about wine. The next one is Bordeaux. I’ll update after the [...]

Once a month a group of friends and I get together to taste wine and eat an eclectic dinner. We select a region and each buy a bottle or two from that place and bring a dish. It is an awesome way to learn about wine. The next one is Bordeaux. I’ll update after the tasting.

Emerging Respect for Food Studies

A little over a year ago I applied to graduate programs to study the culture, politics, and policies of food in the United States. At the time, I met with countless academics in the Bay Area. While some, like Michael Pollan (UC Berkeley) and Carolyn de la Peña (UC Davis) did not question the validity [...]