October 10, 2008
Posted by Deb Harkness, October 10, 2008 at 11:30 AM
On Fridays, Deb Harkness of Good Wine Under $20 drops by with Serious Grape. This week, she discusses the scenario of drinking wine alone while traveling for business—minus the hotel room's plastic tumblers.
The McCormick & Shmick's bar at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. Photograph from Paul Keleher on Flickr
If you are a business traveler like me, dining alone on the road can be more than a bit depressing. This is especially true if, like me, you drink a glass of wine with dinner each night. Room service might be able to produce competent hamburgers and fries, but I can't face an industrial-strength "wine glass" full of warm red wine with a piece of plastic wrap on top and a paper "coaster" keeping it all in place.
Buying a bottle of wine and drinking it over several days in the hotel's plastic water tumblers while sitting on the bed and watching CNN doesn't cut it, either.
So what's a wine-and-food-loving business traveler to do?
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Posted by Deb Harkness, October 3, 2008 at 11:15 AM
On Fridays, Deb Harkness of Good Wine Under $20 drops by with Serious Grape. This week, she rethinks how we should make, package, and ship wine.
Photograph from brewrat on Flickr
Picture yourself walking into your favorite market. You've got your reusable grocery bags and a few wine bottles with screw caps.
You do your shopping, you head to the wine section before checking out, and a nice person in the wine section takes your wine bottles. He or she either fills them with wine or cleans them and gives you replacements, filling the new bottles with wine and screwing on the cap.
In a time when everyone is thinking about alternative packaging and the environment, why isn't anyone talking about going back to the days of buying wine straight from the barrels?
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Posted by Deb Harkness, September 26, 2008 at 11:00 AM
On Fridays, Deb Harkness of Good Wine Under $20 drops by with Serious Grape. This week, why you should buy Beaujolais.
There's nothing like fall—and a falling stock market—to make me feel bullish about Beaujolais.
I'm not talking about the "nouveau" stuff—although I have to confess that I drink that too. But that is released later in fall, just before Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, the air is getting crisper, we've still got our grills out on the decks and balconies, and most of us are seriously worried about the economy.
It's during transition times, and difficult times, that I always turn to Beaujolais. At times like this, highly affordable wines from Burgundy's Beaujolais region are at their most welcome—and their most delicious.
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Posted by Deb Harkness, September 19, 2008 at 11:00 AM
As a relative newcomer to the Serious Eats family, I've been gobbling up the feeds and learning about the interests of my fellow contributors. Two things I know for sure already: these people love food, and boy, can they cook.
Every now and again a Serious Eats recipe flashes across my computer screen and I think to myself, "Oh, [fill in the grape here] would go great with that dish!"
So I decided to give you a week's worth of food and wine pairing suggestions, all of which began with an inspiring recipe on this site. I don't adhere to many traditional "wine and food pairing rules," like no red wine with fish, so I'm including a white wine and a red wine recommendation for each. And, because food and wine pairing can be intimidating, I'm going to explain exactly why I chose the wines I did.
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Posted by Deb Harkness, September 12, 2008 at 11:00 AM
On Fridays, Deb Harkness of Good Wine Under $20 drops by with Serious Grape. This week, how to preserve a bottle of bubbly.
A glass of Segura Viudas Cava Brut Rosado.
If you open my fridge and there isn't a half-empty bottle of wine in it, then it's a sure sign I'm out of the country.
Most often, the half-empty bottle contains sparkling wine. When I come home after work, I love a chilled glass of bubbles while I'm making dinner. I open a bottle and then I drink one perfect glass a night over the next five nights.
Since I'm the only one who drinks in my house, a normal-sized bottle of bubbly lasts quite a while. Though I know a lot of people who would never, ever consider opening a bottle of wine just for themselves for fear it will go "bad" before they drink it up, this has never struck me as a good plan.
And sparkling wine, with its love of cold temperatures, is one of the easiest wines to drink one glass at a time.
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