What's Going On in the World of French Wines

On Monday I attended the annual Institute of Masters of Wine Champagne tasting in New York. It has been quite some time since I’ve had the opportunity to taste so many Champagnes all at once and it truly was an amazing experience. While these wines are a bit more expensive than the wines we normally discuss here on the blog, I did find three that I thought were worth a mention for the next time you are looking for a special (and truly delicious) bottle of Champagne.

The first wine that really knocked my socks off was the Ayala Brut Zero Dosage (around $45). This is a Champagne made from a …

I had originally thought I would try to make a salmon dish to pair with this week’s Wine of the Week tonight. But then at the grocery store today I discovered that they had a special on haddock, which is my son’s favorite type of fish and not one that I can find all that frequently here in North Carolina. So I decided to wait a few days on my salmon pairing and serve the haddock for dinner instead.

I considered keeping my original plan to serve the Marsannay rosé with the haddock, but then I had a thought. Why not do something completely different? I’ve mentioned a few times here on …

As I have mentioned in a few previous posts, I just got back from my summer vacation last week and have been getting caught up with mail, laundry and all of the general back-to-school preparations. Although I am a bit sad to be saying goodbye to the summer (mainly the vacation part), I always get excited by the thought of a new school year – I feel a little like the dad in those Staples ads singing “it’s the most wonderful time of the year!”

Even though I no longer get to go back to school, Fall still strikes me as a good time to start learning something new or better yet, an appropriate time …

Recently a reader sent in the following question to the blog:

Should you always pair regional cuisine with a wine from that same region? I made a great Mexican dish last night– could I have served it with a French wine?

I wanted to share my answer to this question in a blog post because I think that this highlights an important issue about food and wine pairing that confuses a lot of people.

In general, when it comes to matching a wine to a dish, it is rare to make a mistake when you pair wines and food of the same region together. Traditionally this had to do with the fact that …

This has been a bit of a busy week. Wednesday was the Satellite Media Tour for Wines of France and so I spent most of the day in a studio in New York doing tv and radio interviews. I got to talk about French wines with folks from all over the US, and it was quite a lot of fun. It was also an interesting way to spend Bastille Day!

There were two main themes that I discussed during my interviews – the first was some thoughts on summer entertaining ideas and the second had …