“Everyone wants to talk about the big Ford truck,” Derrick Westbrook says. “No one wants to hear about your tiny hybrid.” Westbrook, a Chicago-based sommelier, is explaining why single-serve sparkling wine bottles don’t generate as much industry cred as magnums and other large-format vessels.
During World War II, as Americans were planting backyard victory gardens, residents of Burgundy, France responded to wartime privation in the most French way imaginable: They created an elegant cocktail out of Nazi-resistant wine. The Kir cocktail is made with one part crème de cassis, or blackcurrant liqueur, and four parts dry white wine.
When made properly, Mimosas are a low-proof crowd-pleaser. Orange juice and sparkling wine come together in a seemingly foolproof formula that transforms eggs and toast into something celebratory. Unfortunately, like brunch, the meal they typically accompany, Mimosas can fall victim to their own popularity. They are too frequently made sloppily in massive quantities, overpowered by […]
It does and does not make sense to use an Instant Pot for mulled wine. On the one hand, pressure cooking is incredibly efficient. With an Instant Pot, you can transform unremarkable supermarket wine into festive gluhwein in five-ish minutes. This is a great party trick! Besides, when patience and temperatures are plummeting, every minute […]
A Thanksgiving feast of roast turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and brown gravy is notoriously difficult to pair with wine. With so many components on the table, it’s tempting to just open a few nondescript, light-bodied reds and call it a day. Not so fast, sommeliers say.
Like all truly successful entrepreneurs, Chrishon Lampley is a pragmatic visionary. The Chicago-based négociant has sold more than 50,000 wines since debuting her label, Love Cork Screw, in 2013. “Growth has been unbelievable,” she told the Chicago Tribune earlier this year. “I have outsold the vineyards I work with to produce my wine.” Lampley believes in […]
”The Bloody Mary is the most inconsistently made cocktail,” Alejandro Javier Lopez, founder and president of Toma Craft Cocktail Mixers, says. While classics like the Old Fashioned have prescribed processes, Bloody Marys are a moving target. Order one at a bar or restaurant, and it might be served with a celery stick, pickled shrimp, or skewered […]
Barcelona seems familiar, even to those of us who’ve never been. Everyone has a friend — some of us are that friend — who visited once, as a Eurail Pass-toting undergrad, and still raves about it. They slur the “c” in the city’s name whenever possible, trilling Bahthhhelona with gusto. But Barcelona is much more […]
