Mouthing Off

I have a disproportionate amount of guy friends, which means I usually start getting distraught calls around this time of year (i.e., two days before Valentine’s Day) asking for gift suggestions. Case in point: Over the weekend, I asked my newlywed friend Adam what he was doing for his wife on Valentine’s Day. His response: “I didn't know you still have to do Valentine's Day after getting married!” For any other guys out there who may have forgotten, or waited until the last minute, here are a few ideas for the food-and-wine-loving woman that will fit every budget.

* The newly introduced Pulpe Vitaminée facial ($235) at the Caudalie wine spa in New York City’s Plaza Hotel is an hour and 20 minutes of pure bliss. The grapeseed-based vitamin-E serum used in the treatment is superhydrating and left my skin glowing. After the treatment you get to relax even more in the spa’s glamorous wine lounge, where a sommelier will serve you a complimentary glass of the house wine, Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte.

* Cult beauty brand Fresh recently launched a new collection, Citron de Vigne, inspired by Veuve Clicquot’s vintage La Grande Dame Champagne. The perfume is $75, but I also love the soap, which comes hand-wrapped in kimono-inspired paper and costs $14.

* I eat out for work all the time, so I’m always more impressed when a man offers to cook me dinner. It’s much more intimate and thoughtful (and usually less expensive!) For inspiration, check out Food & Wine's most sexy recipes and irresistible milk-chocolate desserts.

© Caudalie Spa
The wine lounge in Caudalie Spa at the Plaza Hotel

© Courtesy of Fresh
Fresh's new Champagne-inspired collecttion

I know that I definitely haven't finished my shopping, so I'm figuring I must have company out there in the rest of the world, too. Here are some terrific wines and other items (books, chocolates, etc.) that caught my eye recently:

I tasted a plethora of New Zealand Pinots on my recent trip there, but many of them are upcoming releases. I'll blog about those later; in the meantime, the 2006 Peregrine Pinot Noir (about $40, find this wine) is classic Central Otago Pinot, with a sort of blue floral scent (oh, you know what I mean...right?), juicy raspberry fruit, and a brambly, smoky finish. It's big enough to pour with some nice New Zealand grass-fed lamb.

For the crazy funkmeister wine fanatics in your acquaintance, a bottle of the 2000 Chateau Musar Red (about $40, too; find this wine) is just the ticket. It's got that classic Musar aroma of bicycle tire and sweet red cherry, with the same sweet red cherry fruit continuing in the flavor, along with wild strawberries and lightly twiggy tannins (by which I mean not-unpleasantly prickly in a dry twig sort of way). It's a big, dark Musar, representative of the vintage, which Serge Hochar says "was a year of Cabernet." Hochar also says, "If my wines had no V.A., I would stop making Chateau Musar. End of story." So be warned!

Since toasts are inevitable this time of year, Champagne is inevitable as well, and given its inevitability, you might as well pour something really good. Lately I'm liking the Ruinart Brut Rose NV ($75, find this wine). Not cheap, but it's a terrific rosé, dense with flavor even as its graceful structure gives it a kind of Grace Kelly beauty, in a wine way. 

In a non-wine vein, chocolate-genius Drew Shotts of Garrison Chocolates has a nifty and very tasty six-piece box of chocolates ($10) with fillings infused with Pama Pomegranate Liqueur. Too late, most likely, for Christmas, but not too late to order a box for yourself. You deserve one, since you're probably exhausted with all this present-buying craziness.

Lastly, I left one book off of my post about wine-book gifts, which is Ben Wallace's compelling page-turner dissection of one of the bigger wine scandals to happen in, oh, the past century or so. The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine rolls scads of money, super-valuable (or not so!) counterfeit wines, some very high-profile collectors, shady business dealings, and a few read-it-to-believe-it debaucheries involving bottle after bottle of ultra-rare wine together into one big juicy narrative. I've never read a wine book that was as much of a page-turner; it's also smart and well written, which doesn't hurt.

And that's it. I'm out of here until after New Year's. 

My friends must have been inspired by F&W’s list of 20 spectacular holiday parties in the December issue because this month has turned into one nonstop party – cocktail parties, cookie swap parties, Mad Men–themed parties, Monday Night Football parties, dinner parties. I can barely keep up with finding enough cute party dresses, let alone finding the perfect hostess gifts. You can never go wrong with bubbly or booze. Here, some more personalized gift ideas that I’ve found to be a hit on the party circuit:
 
*Mixology Tools
Roost’s Elixir bar straw set is a great addition to any home bartender’s collection. The platinum-tipped stirrers come in a wooden holder so they won’t ever get lost.  

* Utilitarian Vases
Fashion designer Reem Acra told me about Hope Forever’s blossoming “plastivases”. They take form when filled up with water and fold flat for easy storage when not being used.

*Hoppy Complements
Vosges Haut Chocolat’s Beer and Bacon gift box pairs Oregon’s Rogue Shakespeare, a deliciously hoppy oatmeal stout, with Vosges’s salty, sweet applewood smoked bacon milk chocolate bars.

*Eco Beauty Bonus
Pangea Organics’ holiday gift sets are filled with exceptional eco-friendly bar soaps, body lotions, face scrubs and hand gels. Even more exciting, the seeds of a spruce tree are embedded in the molded fiber box. Plant it now and you’ll have a Christmas tree by next season.

*Farm Fresh Cheese
Support New England family farms by leasing a Jersey cow in a friend’s name through Rent Mother Nature. Your friend gets three supercreamy 8-ounce wheels of Brie or cheddar cheese, plus regular updates on the cow from its pasture in Vermont.

*Global Dining
Map out your next trip to London, Tokyo, New York City or Paris over dinner with a set of easy-to-clean world map place mats.

© Courtesy of Pangea Organics
Holiday gift boxes from Pangea Organics grow into Christmas trees

Since it's just two days until Christmas, we all decided it would be nice to start the festivities a little early. When F&W wine guru Ray Isle asked how we in the Test Kitchen were, I replied, "We'd be better if we were drinking a little wine." No sooner had Test Kitchen goddess Melissa Rubel suggested something pink and bubbly than Ray returned with a bottle of Pierre Sparr, sparkling rosé. It accompanied the steamed fish I am testing (for April's Tasting & Testing column) brilliantly, not to mention lifted all our spirits. God bless us, every one!

Recently, writer Jonathan Miles pondered that traditional holiday drink: mulled wine. It's fragrant, it's soothing and it’s the official beverage of Charles Dickens's “A Christmas Carol.” The only problem? No one actually craves it. "Mulled wine, like roast goose, is one of those holiday confections that often sounds better than it tastes," Miles writes. Fortunately, he offers some lust-worthy permutations, including a cold punch by former F&W staffer and current Tasting Table editor Nick Fauchald, made primarily with Zinfandel, Becherovka (a cinnamon-and-anise-flavored liqueur from the Czech Republic) and homemade spiced plum syrup.

Personally, I don't have anything against mulled wine. It's eggnog that I've never been able to get around. I've always found it too gloppy, like cloyingly sweet dead weight in the mouth. My modest proposal? Switch to coquito, a Latin take on eggnog with serious coconut flavor, rum and hints of cinnamon and vanilla. Now that's what I consider crave-worthy.

That ol' holiday entertaining season is upon us (perhaps you noticed?) which means that the season of morning shows running segments about holiday entertaining is, too. Which is why I'm hopping in a cab when it's still dark outside tomorrow morning and heading over to the Saturday Early Show on CBS to do a 7:45 segment on holiday punches. On the docket are Fish House Punch—a Philadelphia classic that my charming wife's grandfather used to debilitate people with—and a brandy-red wine punch; I'll probably have a few other tasty-looking punches sitting around on the set as well, like this Limoncello Collins, and a Citrus-Cinnamon non-alcoholic punch that's ideal for kids, teetotalers, hamsters, and other non-likker-drinkin' folk.

Here's the video of the segment, too. 

When oil prices went through the roof this summer and airlines started charging all sorts of never-before-seen fees, a lot of my friends were hunkering down, forgoing any air travel, and for the first time, using that odd blend of words: staycation. But now that we're officially in a recession and discretionary spending is being, well, regarded with heavier discretion, airlines have begun slashing their prices to entice travelers. (Airfarewatchdog.com is a particularly great aggregator of airfare deals.)

For those of you about to travel, check out our "Where to Eat Out During the Holidays" guide, showcasing five great restaurants in 10 cities around the country and what special offerings they'll have for the Christmas week. (If I were going to San Francisco, I'd put in an advance order for A16's holiday dishes, like porchetta and whole roasted duck. And according to a quick search on Travelocity.com, I could get to San Francisco next week for a bargain $288 roundtrip.)

This year saw a veritable flood of wine-related books. As always, some were good, some were great, and some were dreary. We'll skip the drear—it's already a worrisome enough holiday season without nattering on and on about bad books. And in fact, if cheering up is what you're after, one solution (at least for people who like wine) is to dash out and buy The Wine Snob's Dictionary, by David Kamp and David Lynch. Kamp, who writes and edits at Vanity Fair, is the satiric impresario behind the Snob's Dictionary series of books; Lynch, who I'm assuming supplied the insider-wine-info—and, knowing him, no small percentage of the wit as well—has written all over the place, including for F&W. (He's also co-author with Joe Bastianich of Vino Italiano, one of the best books out there on Italian wine.)

The Wine Snob's Dictionary operates nicely in its dual role of snarkily taking apart wine-geek pretensions while actually imparting useful information at the same time, e.g., "Volatile Acidity: Common wine defect caused by excessive production of acetic acid, resulting in a vinegary smell. Traditionally abbreviated to V.A. by Snobs, who like to use the term to intimidate pourers and sommeliers." 

Heading entirely in the other direction is Clive Coates magisterial (really) The Wines of Burgundy. Nigh on 900 pages of Burgundy-detail, with lucid tasting notes going back to vintages in the 1960s, a section of precisely detailed maps, and substantial profiles of vintages, producers and appellations, this is not a book for the casual wine fan. But people who are into Burgundy rarely fall into that category anyway. 

Since there are, of course, a lot of casual wine fans out there, it's probably more appropriate to throw a copy of Tyler Colman's A Year of Wine their way. Colman, alias Dr. Vino, takes a seasonal conceit as the organizing principle of his lively, approachable, basic guide to wine. It's a loose structure—I'm not sure why one should travel to Oregon in July rather than August, say, or June, though I'm happy to agree that Grüner Veltliner does have a green, nifty, springtime feel to it—but it's a functional one, and Colman's advice throughout is presented in pleasantly non-technical, casual language.

For friends who like a little conflict with their Cabernet, buy them a copy of Alice Feiring's part-vino-autobiography/part-impassioned-screed The Battle for Wine & Love. Feiring is as fervently in favor of funk, wildness, tradition, organic viticulture, natural yeasts and so on as she is fervently against new oak, large corporations that make wine, cold maceration, and the influence of wine critic (and F&W contributing editor) Robert Parker, among other things. The result is a bit like touring the world's vineyards with a slightly crazed and often funny Bohemian Luddite who REALLY loves wine—or at least loves the wines that she doesn't really hate. This makes for a fairly entertaining romp. The Parker-bashing gets tedious, to say the least, but it's made up for by passages like Feiring's account of working the harvest at Clos Roche Blanche, which is both lyrical and deeply real, and makes most of her philosophical and esthetic points more effectively than the portions of the book that are more overtly tendentious. 

If you're the kind of person who likes food with their wine—which I suppose means if you're breathing and ambulatory, and your jaws still work—then it's worth checking out Cathy and Tony Mantuano's Wine Bar Food. This isn't technically a wine book; instead, it's a cookbook that happens to focus on fairly simple (and mighty delicious) recipes inspired by the wine bars of several Mediterranean cities: Venice, Rome, Barcelona, Athens, etc. Tony Mantuano is the longtime chef (and partner) at Chicago's Spiaggia; we ran a few of these recipes in our April issue last year, so feel free to test-drive one or two before shelling out for the book. Or just throw caution to the winds—my guess is you won't regret it.

Lastly, in a more broadly alcoholic way, there's Kingsley Amis. Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis is a reissue of three books on wine, liquor and beer that he wrote between 1971 and 1984. Some of the terms are dated, but Amis's gracefully lethal wit is as fresh now as it was then. Regarding serving Champagne: "...see that the wine is properly chilled; not less than two hours in the refrigerator is my advice. This should be common knowledge, but the world is full of idiots who buy a bottle at the supermarket, let it kick around half the morning in the boot of the car, open it on arriving home and are amazed when the stuff goes all over the kitchen ceiling." Not one to mince words, Mr. Amis, but then he never was. 

Just in case President Bush’s efforts to ease holiday hassles at the airport aren’t foolproof F&W’s Senior Online Editor Rachel Wharton has devised the ultimate airport dining survival guide so you can at least eat and drink well while you wait for delayed flights or lost luggage.

Anyone flying through Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International should check out the truly revolutionary airport restaurant, One Flew South (near gate G6, in terminal E). Chef Todd Richards wanted to give international travelers a taste of real American food as well as ingredients from local purveyors and he’s created a Southern-influenced menu of dishes like snapper seared in rendered bacon fat with jumbo lump crab grits and Benton’s bacon and Sweet Grass Dairy goat cheese salad. The restaurant also provides a bit of American cocktail history: a 1920s-inspired drink list developed by mixologist Jerry Slater.

Richards and team have to deal with their own airport-security hassles. Every knife in the kitchen must be chained to a fixture, and security conducts monthly “knife counts” to make sure none have gone missing. And pastry torches are banned, so don’t expect crème brulee on the dessert menu.
 

I've just learned, thanks to the erstwhile blogging efforts of my friend Dr. Vino, that a large glass of wine is the caloric equivalent of two jaffa cakes and an onion bhaji. I think I'd be more alarmed by this if I'd ever actually eaten a jaffa cake (Dr. V. is in the same boat), but mostly I'm amused. You, too, can be amused by similar equations—four large glasses = hamburger + jaffa cake + onion bhaji + doughnut + slice of pizza—by checking out this nifty caloric translator on the BBC Radio 1 site. It's very entertaining, especially if you're suffering from brain-deadening jetlag, as I am, having returned late last night from several days of zooming around vineyards in New Zealand.

I'll mention while I'm at it that Dr. V., alias Tyler Colman, has just published a very engaging book about wine (appropriately enough—lucky for all of us he didn't decide to become Dr. Kelp Juice) entitled A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season. You could run right out and buy it, or you could wait until I post—in theory later this week—the pithy review I've been planning of several recently released wine books. Ideal for last-minute holiday shopping...