"gewurztraminer" news and stories

Niagara's Lailey Vineyard. Photo: Monika Bartyzel

• Trekking across the Niagara Region for seasonal comfort food, pies and wines, and traveling through Muskoka for honey, coffee and family farming.
• "Mad Men," their love of cocktails, and a recipe for a Betty Draper-inspired gimlet.
• Sumac's sour, fruit-like flavor makes it a great substitute for a splash of lemon.
• Open's 2008 Riesling-Gewürtztraminer is a fine summer wine, plus the run-down on Beringer's 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon ("a steal") and Prospect's Pinot Noir.
• The porcine pleasures of prosciutto pioneers.
• Recipe: Wild Blueberry Lemon Jam

Kid-friendly panda bento box. Photo: luckysundae, Flickr

• How to pack nutrition and flavor into kids' school lunches and home meals.
• Cookie jars might be cute but they don't keep cookies fresh, so slip a zipper-lock bag inside.
• Corn fiends who hate the cob can pick up a "Corn Zipper," which works just like a veggie peeler.
• Wine deets: Messina Hoff's 2006 Gewürztraminer is a top 10 BBQ wine, Texan wines get play at the DrinkLocalWine.com event, and wine courses and tastings will be held at the Texas Sommelier Conference.
  
• If you find it hard to figure out how much a sauce has reduced, a clean metal ruler can come in handy.
• Max's Wine Dive's best-selling Kobe Beef Burger has been named one of the 50 best burgers in Texas.
• Spiffy products: Leigh Oliver's White-Hot Queso, Reese's Dark, Organic Batter Blaster, 100-calorie-portion sandwich crackers, and Tyson's Pork Loin.

I spent last weekend at the San Antonio New World Wine and Food Festival, which is basically a five-day gorge-fest against the backdrop of the beautiful San Antonio River in weather that can only be described as perfect. I was highly amused to receive a welcome gift from the San Antonio Convention and Visitor's Bureau that included Alka Selzer and Advil, as if to prepare us for impending stomachaches and hangovers at the festival.

On Thursday I went to a winemaker's dinner at Las Canarias, a restaurant on the river inside the beautiful old hotel La Mansion. Our winemaker was Jean Trimbach, a clean-cut, handsome Frenchman from Alsace who showcased a gorgeous selection of his family's cool-climate gems from Pinot Blanc to Pinot Noir. "My brother makes the wine, and I drink it," Jean joked when we asked about his role in the family business.

Trimbach has been making wine in Alsace, a French wine region bordering Germany that has changed hands between the two countries several times, since the seventeenth century. Though Trimbach isn't one of the biggest winemakers in Alsace, it's one of the region's most recognizable brands.

Read more about Trimbach wines after the jump.

The world of wine can be intimidating, so you have to go into it with a few rules, and David LeClaire, the sommelier at The Tasting Room in Seattle, has some advice, including:

1. There's no such thing as peanut greg-io. Learn how to pronounce the big names, or you're going to sound like a big geek. You don't need to know everything - and it's OK to stumble on the obscure French boutiques - but do yourself a favor and take "Gewurztraminer" out for a spin before your big date.

7. Move over, Scrooge McDuck. More expensive wine is not always better, especially in the store (bottom-shelf shoppers, rejoice!). But, since a bottle of wine in a restaurant is marked up, by up to three times its retail price (four times for wines by the glass), the cheapest bottle you'll want to buy in a restaurant is $30, says LeClaire. If you're watching pennies, go for wines from Spain, Chile, Argentina or Australia - they're good and half the price.