Food and Wine
November 27, 2013 — Steven Hayward
National Review Online asked for my favorite Thanksgiving recipe or tip, which I was happy to oblige, but they’ve got my named spelled wrong. In any case, here’s the complete text: My favorite Thanksgiving recipe involves lightly rinsing the chilled glass first with Vermouth. . . oh, wait, that’s an everyday recipe. Never mind. Thanksgiving presents a tough choice. Should you cook the turkey on a rotisserie grill, or should
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November 3, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I’ve been falling behind on many regular features these days, among them, the Power Line 100, but also the crucial subject of wine. So here’s a quick catch up guide. Old timers of Paso Robles wines all know the Dusi name. The Dusi family’s Zinfandel vineyards go back nearly a century. For decades, if you wanted to find the best Zinfandels from the region, you wanted to find who bought
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October 5, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Clearly, this is the only wine to drink. It blends a variety of grape interests from different and extensive territories, balances all the factions of your taste buds and thereby extends their sphere, moderates the extremes of tannin, fruit, and smoky essence, and provokes deliberation about the merits of your wine-food pairing. (NB: Some day I’ll make a short film about cabernet sauvignon, and call it “The Royal Tannin-Bombs.” Heh.)
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September 13, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I suppose it was only a matter of time before the Bloombergians of the world decided to extend their regulatory impulses to . . . dinner parties. The local CBS affiliate in New York reports on the crackdown on “illegal” dinner parties (with my commentary interpolated): NEW YORK (CBS 2) — As you sit down to dinner, this story illustrates eating out like you have never experienced before. We are talking
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August 17, 2013 — John Hinderaker
This morning my wife dragged me along to the farmers’ market in Minneapolis. There are numerous farmers’ markets in our area; the St. Paul one is more pristine, as it does not allow any vegetables or fruits grown more than 50 miles away. There are many smaller markets, too. But Minneapolis is a free for all: in fact, a mini State Fair. This was a revelation to me. As we
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August 8, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Oh man, our pal Remy Munasifi would pick the day I skipped lunch to roll out his newest video, about the culinary delights of chicken wings and hummus. It even has a special Hans Blix reference in the middle. Enjoy:
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August 3, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I’ve been falling down on the job of keeping up with the monthly installments from the Paso Wine Guy. Below is his ode last month to Grenache Blanc (and overlooked varietal in my mind), and his harvest festival romp, which features the Wine Guy traversing the same zip line I did in May out on Santa Margarita Ranch. Meanwhile, a few of our loyal female readers, noting our fascination with
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July 24, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Let it never be said that I can’t say anything nice about Jimmy Carter. It’s very nice that he’s an ex-president, for example. (Though the attack submarine is a little much.) I look forward to being able to say the same thing about Obama some day. But lo and behold, it turns out that Jimmy Carter didn’t just de-regulate airlines and trucking: he also de-regulated beer. I believe it was
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July 12, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Scott beat me to the story (yes, we often scoop each other here on Power Line) about how the conventional wisdom about salt has been turned on its head. Memo to Mayor Bloomberg: Can we have our salt shakers back now, please? Will overturning the conventional wisdom on soda be far behind? One thing we do know: Like Nurse Bloomberg’s dietary dictates, Michelle Obama’s school lunch fatwa is a dismal failure.
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July 4, 2013 — Steven Hayward
So I’m team-teaching an intensive (six hours a day in the classroom, which is one reason posts are erratic this week) course on the Cold War this week at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University. But all is not spies and beatdowns on the Soviet Union. Here’s how we roll at the Ashbrook Center (at least at last night’s warm-up party at Roger Beckett’s well-stocked house): Stephen Tootle (College of
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July 4, 2013 — Steven Hayward
In addition to observing our civic obligation to meditate on the Declaration of Independence, it’s also a prime day to celebrate the Great American Barbecue. And just in time, our pal Remy Munasifi is out with a brief video (just over a minute long) observance of how the government is out to screw that up too:
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June 5, 2013 — Steven Hayward
A reader of my suggested LGBT wine blends a while ago points to a provocation by our friends over at Riccochet.com about wine criticism and wine rating in general, the point of which is that wine tasting is “all hooey.” (Actually Riccochet cleaned up the original material, which was predictably bovine in origin.) Wine experts disagree and often contradict themselves (unlike other experts?); the point-scale rating system is clearly subjective;
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May 14, 2013 — Steven Hayward
As I mentioned here once before, the fad in California wines for more than a decade now has been the heavy emphasis on what I call MSG wines. No, that’s not a designation of something to order in your favorite Chinese restaurant; rather, it refers to Rhone-style blends featuring Mourvedre-Syrah-Grenache. Many of these blends are knockouts, and adjusting the blend allows winemakers to bob and weave depending on the weather
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May 14, 2013 — Steven Hayward
And thank goodness it doesn’t. Time for our monthly installment from the Paso Wine Guy, this month extolling the virtue of Viognier. I heartily approve. Can’t get enough good Viognier. Just picked up the new 2012 Viognier from Denner Vineyards, but it needs a couple more months in the bottle before it’s ready to drink. So I’ll be thirsty for a couple of months I guess. Anyway, here it is,
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May 2, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Ben Boychuk of City Journal California (and the fine InfiniteMonkeys blog) has been after me for a while to write for its pages now that I’ve been foolish enough to move back to the less-than-golden state, but I’ve been too busy to oblige. But when he pointed me to the latest nonsense from the climate capos about how California’s wine industry was imperiled, I had to swing into action. The result
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April 7, 2013 — Steven Hayward
It’s the first week of the month, which can only mean one thing: a new short video from the Paso Wine Guy! (See below.) This time, about the old mainstay of California winemaking, Cabernet Sauvingon. Meanwhile, the Puffington Host has a feature out today on the Paso wine region, though it is a bit odd in places. For instance, there’s the claim that Paso is less than three hours from
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March 7, 2013 — Steven Hayward
March means the Zinfandel festival on the central coast next weekend, though I’ll be away, and in any case I’m cutting back right now in my effort to shed a few el-bees. But with the turn of the calendar it’s also time for the latest installment from the Paso Wine Guy; here’s 45 seconds of total oenophilic awesomeness about Zinfandel:
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