Berkshire Bruschetta
Fresh from October Mountain…here’s my latest recipe for young ramps.
One slice People’s Bakery Four Seed Spelt Bread
Six young ramps, cleaned
1 tbsp Olive oil
Shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano
Chop ramps, keeping stems and leaves separate. Heat an iron skillet, add olive oil then add chopped ramp stems. Sauté for two minutes, then add chopped ramp leaves and continue to cook until tender (about two more minutes). Meanwhile, toast bread. Spread sautéed ramps and olive oil on toast, top with shaved Parmigiano Reggiano.
Check it out with a tart West County Cider.
Top of the List
Tomorrow night—May 1st—more than 100 wineries will descend on The Metropolitan Pavilion on West 18th Street for one of the most exciting wine events of the year: Wine & Spirits Magazine’s Annual Top of the List.
What’s on the list: The wines that made the Restaurant Top 50 of our 24th Annual Restaurant Poll, plus some of the most popular sparkling wines and pinot noirs, cabernets and Ports; wines from France, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Greece and more. Wines you know well, and wines that somms have picked as their favorite new discoveries.
Bob Lindquist of Qupé
Rub shoulders with winery owners and winemakers—David Adelsheim from Oregon; Ken Coopersmith at Merry Edwards, Jay & Tobin Heminway from Green & Red, Bob Lindquist from Qupé, Michael Terrien from Obsidian Ridge and John Wurdeman of Pheasant†. . . Continue reading →
De-Vine Intervention
John Ragan MS
Several months after Hurricane Sandy hit New York, many restaurants still remained closed—places as revered as The River Café and as legendary as the Bridge Café. Some, like Brooklyn’s short-lived but much-acclaimed Governor, will never reopen. In response to the continued challenges the hurricane left in its wake, Danny Meyer, of the Union Square Hospitality Group, and Master Sommelier John Ragan, wine director for the group, have called on the local restaurant community to launch DeVine Intervention, an online wine auction. Gathering wines from reputable restaurants and collectors, they are offering 250 lots with no buyer’s premium, and donating 100 percent of the hammer price of each lot sold to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City in support of Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts. A taste of what’s on offer: a 2001 Bartolo . . . Continue reading →
Lindsey Ford of Moonshine on Diversity and Spice in Austin, TX
Lindsey Ford has been at Moonshine—a bar and grill that leans toward old-school Americana—since 2005. She first worked as a bartender, then took over the wine program in 2011. Lara Douglass spoke with her about how she reformatted the wine list since then.
It was kind of incidental that we had wine before—if you think about the name. In 2011, we made the first big wine list change. I saw that we didn’t have to stick to California cabs and merlots. We have really rich food that was able to take more interesting wines for Austin—albariño and grüner veltliner, malbec and sangiovese all do really well by the glass.
With the diversity on the list, we include descriptions with our wines. It makes a big difference—to have people try something . . . Continue reading →
A Laurel for Tara
Tara Q. Thomas, our intrepid executive editor, fell in love with Greece when she staged at a restaurant in Athens while studying at the Culinary Institute of America. When she joined the magazine in 1997, she immediately set her sites on reporting the renaissance that was happening in Greek wine—a modernization of winemaking practices, certainly, but also a concerted effort to clarify the astonishing terroirs and palette of indigenous grapes that had been there all along. Recently, she’s brought to our attention Santorini’s precise, mineral assyrtikos, and traced the emergence of malagousia as one Greece’s rising-star grapes.
In recognition of her efforts to educate Americans about Greek wines, the Greek wine industry recently awarded her the first annual Greek Wine Industry Award. They created the honor “to acknowledge outstanding contributions to . . . Continue reading →
