Piedmont

Pizza Ballet at Pizaro's

The proof is in the pies at Pizaro's Pizza Napoletana, where dough is tossed in the air and comes to earth in heavenly fashion.

When Master Sommelier Bobby Stuckey Pours at Uchi, Houston's Top Sommeliers Listen

Houston, is that a frico dropping? By my count, there were roughly forty of our city's top wine professionals in the room, all listening with rapt attention and relishing savory nuggets of wine wisdom imparted by Master Sommelier Bobby Stuckey (above). And I'm not talking benchwarmers. This was an ... More >>

Antonio Gianola's New Italian Wine Program at Houston Wine Merchant

It's only been a few short weeks since a handsome Floridian swooped down from the sky and snatched up one of Houston's most beloved wine professionals, Marcy Jimenez. Hers is a tough act to follow: Since moving to Houston in 2005, she was a buyer and floor manager at Houston's only independently ow ... More >>

Maverick Wine Importer Doug Skopp Delivers Old World Flavors Against All Odds

Maverick wine importer Doug Skopp (above) and his Houston-based Dionysus wine distribution company first came to my attention via our mutual friend and Houston Chronicle sports and wine writer, Dale Robertson. "You've got to meet Doug," Dale kept saying to me. "He's the guy bringing in the Barberas ... More >>

Big California Wine Crushes a Houston Import from Italy: Sutter Home Forces Trinchero Family to Remove Its Own Name from Labels

La reproduction interdite... When a colleague showed me the new label for Trinchero Barbera d'Asti Superiore (2006 vintage) last night, I thought to myself, either he is playing a practical joke on me or this is a work of surrealist art. As if plucked from a painting by Magritte or a fountain by D ... More >>

Oklahoma Po-Po Busts Three-Year-old Taking a Public Pee-Pee; Mom Fined Price of Used Car

A Piedmont, Oklahoma cop caught a three-year-old boy peeing in his own front yard and brought down the hammer. The cop wrote little Dillan's mother Ashley Warden a citation for public urination, and the fine is $2,500. "I said really, he is 3 years old, and [the cop] said it doesn't matter," Dillan ... More >>

What Is Terroir and Why Is It Important in Wine?

One of the greatest examples of terroir is Parmigiano Reggiano, the unmistakable and incomparably delicious cheese made in the region of Emilia-Romagna (in northern Italy). They make a similar cheese, using similar methods, just across the Po river on the north side of the great waterway (which flo ... More >>

How to Send Back a Bottle of Wine at a Restaurant

A few months ago, when I was dining with family in a Houston restaurant (that shall remain unnamed), I ordered a bottle of Dolcetto, one of the classic food-friendly grapes of Piedmont, in northwestern Italy. The server disappeared and swiftly returned with the bottle I had asked for. And presumabl ... More >>

Upcoming Events: Oktoberfest Contests, Beer-and-Burger Pairings and Free Food Truck Lunches for All

Celebrate 20 years of artist studios at Lawndale Art Center and five years of the Lawndale Artist Studio Program with Tasteful Art, a special tasting event featuring local contemporary artists and chefs at the historic and beautiful Hofheinz House (3900 Milam). Lawndale is bringing culinary artists ... More >>

Climate Change, a Hard Fact for European Winemakers

My wife, daughter, and I are on the last leg of a road trip that has taken us through ten of Italy's 20 regions, from the far northeast to Mt. Vesuvius on the western coast of the south, to the tip of the heel of the boot in Lecce (Apulia [Puglia]). Today we're in central Italy, along the Adriatic s ... More >>

A Great Italian Wine List at Nundini

For an Italian wine lover like me, the wine list at Nundini Chef's Table Italian Kitchen & Wine Bar, the subject of this week's cafe review (I filled in for Katharine Shilcutt), is a dream come true. It covers nearly every wine-growing region in Italy, and its prices are not just reasonable... they ... More >>

The Trouble with Truffle Oil (Farts and Formaldehyde)

People, I'm sorry to break it to you, but there are just no two ways about it: truffle oil (or truffled oil) is a sham, it's bad for you, and it's just downright evil. I'm currently traveling in Italy, where the world's most famous truffles are foraged. When I received an email from my editor here ... More >>

Giving Head: What Wine for Head Cheese?

Of all the salacious nuggets that still thrill Babbo sycophants, the one that I regrettably can't erase from my memory is the tale of President Clinton and Mario Batali's testa, boiled pig's head. Evidently, in a celebration of the fratboy-sexist-misogynist mindset that drives the great brain (read ... More >>

This Woman Made Me Drink Merlot

"The thing I like about the Houston wine scene," says the Houston Wine Merchant's Marcy Jimenez (above), "is the Gulf Coast attitude. We're a little more relaxed than the folks to the north of here." Marcy was born in the Bronx and raised on Long Island, New York. But she cut her teeth in the New Or ... More >>

Forget the Boring Tie: 5 Wines for Father's Day

Five years ago, it would have been unimaginable to give dad wine for Father's Day. Back then, in the age before the millennial generation decided that it would make wine its favorite luxury beverage, we still bought our fathers ties, golf clubs, and Weber grills and smokers to celebrate their "speci ... More >>

A Meaty White Wine for the First Pesto of Summer

Fresh basil has been arriving from our Community-Supported Agriculture subscription, and that means it's time for long noodles with pesto at our house. Traditionally, Genoese pesto is made with freshly grated pecorino, sheep's milk cheese. But at our house, we go for the pan-Italian (or pseudo-Gen ... More >>

What's the Deal With "Old" Wine?

So, what's the deal with old wine anyway? Wednesday's post on What are "Tannins" in Wine? got me thinking about the widely divergent ways Europeans and Americans perceive and approach the consumption of "old wine." Tannins and "tannic structure," after all, are part of what gives wine its longevity ... More >>

Legendary Appalachian Picker Doc Watson Passes Away At 89

Arthel "Doc" Watson, one of the all-time virtuosos of Appalachian guitar and a beloved figure in both the bluegrass and Americana communities, passed away Tuesday night Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., a statement a statement on his Web site www.docsguitar.com said. He was ... More >>

B[ring] Y[our] O[wn] B[arbera]

In the aftermath of recent posts here at Wine Time on corkage and tipping etiquette, Lucio's BYOB and Grill seemed like an ideal destination for a working dinner with a colleague -- a demilitarized zone, as it were. After all, it has "BYOB" in the name of the venue. Not knowing what to expect in ... More >>

Red, White and Orange: More and More Orange Wines in Houston

"Old man piss." I hate to say it, but it's the best descriptor to use to describe the color of many of the "orange" wines that are finding their way to our market these days. As you can see from the color of the wine in the glass above, orange wines aren't really orange: They tend to have a deep ... More >>

The Rest of the Best: Houston's Top 10 Expense-Account Restaurants

For the next 20 weeks, we'll be rounding up the runners-up to our 2011 Best of Houston® winners. In many categories, picking each year's winner is no easy task. We'll be spotlighting 20 of those categories, in which the winner had hefty competition from other Houston bars and restaurants. 10. The ... More >>

Wine Time: A Favorite Wine for Easter Lamb

When it comes to pairing wine with food, we live by two maxims at our house. 1. If it grows with it, it goes with it. (Motto attributed to the great New York restaurateur Danny Meyer.) Look to traditional pairings as rules-of-thumb. For example, the inhabitants of the western coast of France famo ... More >>

Odd Pair: Extreme House-Cured Charcuterie

Ever since the late 1990s and the advent of Molto Mario and his in-house salumeria at Babbo in Manhattan, extreme house-cured charcuterie has been embraced by chefs across the nation with seemingly unrivaled zeal. (Ever wonder why so many of them make "duck prosciutto"? It's because hanging ducks ta ... More >>

Wine of the Week: An Albariño That Really Delivered

Some people tend to drink more red wine than white during winter. At our house, we tend to drink more white than red -- year round. And it's not because we have an issue with red wine. In fact, some of our best friends are red wines. On Saturday nights at home, when I might treat myself to a black ... More >>

Notes From a Kitchen: Chefs' Obsession Asks: Are Chefs Artists?

Photo by Patrise Shuttleworth​Notes From a Kitchen: A Journey Inside Culinary Obsession is like a VIP pass to a chef's stream of consciousness: all those secret ideas, moments of inspiration, ingredients, preparation, serving vessels and flavor memories, finally revealed. Every chef has them. ... More >>

The World's Sexiest Wine for Valentine's Day

We've written about wine and sex here before: Since antiquity, wine and the cult of Bacchus and Dionysus have been associated with sexuality and intimacy. Wine -- red in particular, thanks to its polyphenols -- not only diminishes our inhibition ("I wanna tell her that I love her a lot, but I gotta ... More >>

Wine Whine: Waiter, Please Don't Chill My White Wine (Too Much)!

You can imagine how thrilled I was when I discovered one of my favorite northern Italian white wines on the list the other night at Giacomo's Cibo e Vino on Westheimer: The 2010 Anas-Cëtta (Nascetta) by Cogno for under $40. (The name of this rare grape is Nascetta, pronounced nah-SHEHT-tah. Origina ... More >>

Wine & Truffle Dinner at Valentino Vin Bar

Photos by Christina UticoneDolcetto d'Alba​As if a wine hangover weren't bad enough, did you know you can actually get a truffle hangover? I woke up with one after five luscious courses of food at the recent Truffle & Wine dinner held at Valentino. Who can resist a hook like white truffles -- ... More >>

Top 5 Gifts for Wine Lovers

Photo by Jeremy Parzen.Decanters by Riedel take wine service to a higher level of aesthetic pleasure. ​If you're ever invited to dine in someone's home in France, please don't bring a bottle of wine. Nothing will spur a French host to recoil in abject dishonor and displeasure than the gift of ... More >>

Tasting Notes: This Week in Wine Blogs

Another Wine Blog: Love born in the blogosphere. It's a beautiful thing. A few weeks ago, when I shared a glass of stinky, delicious Cortese (from Piedmont) with tandem wine bloggers Amy and Joe Power, authors of Another Wine Blog, they told me the story of how they met in the "pre-blog" era, in a ... More >>

Odd Pair: A Favorite Wine for Breakfast

Photos by Jeremy Parzen.Serve gently sparkling Moscato d'Asti in a larger glass and you will be rewarded by its fresh stone fruit aromas. Moscato d'Asti, it's what's for breakfast.​In one of my favorite novels of all time, a character in Kurt Vonnegut's 1973 masterpiece calls the martini the B ... More >>

(Not So) Odd Pair: Wine and Sex

​The publication, last week, of the first English-language translation of the Japanese manga comic Drops of God by Tadashi Agi (a pseudonym for brother and sister Shin and Yuko Kibayashi) aroused my, ahem, curiosity. I have not yet read it but am dying to. The editors of the prestigious Br ... More >>

Odd Pair: Wine and Legs (or Tears That Rhyme with Ears)

Photos by Jeremy Parzen.The legs of 2005 Langhe Nebbiolo Sperss by Gaja (Piedmont, Italy), tasted this week in Houston.​How many times have you been at a dinner party and heard some blowhard say something like the following (uttered with a fake British accent): Observe carefully: After swirli ... More >>

Odd Pair: Pseudo-Italian Sports Bar and French Wine

​Let's face it: No matter how you dress or slice the meatballs (more on that below), if you have ESPN constantly streaming on monitors that hover above your bar and dining room, you are a sports bar -- even if you slap ristorante italiano onto the name of your restaurant. According to its web ... More >>

Odd Pair: Cheeseburger and Barbaresco

​My friend and blogging colleague Franco Ziliani -- Italy's top wine blogger and veteran enojournalist -- is always astonished at how Americans "apply" the great wines of Italy. In Europe, the food and wine canon guides the "user" in ensuring that the wine will be enjoyed to the fullest by pa ... More >>

Lombardia Wines and Carmelo's: A Great Pairing

​I was recently able to attend a dinner arranged by the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce of Texas and Harvest Importing to promote the wine of the Lombardy (North Central) region. The dinner was held at Carmelo's Italian Restaurant, the longstanding West Houston establishment. Lombardia wine ... More >>

Odd Pair: Carne Asada Tampiqueña and Nebbiolo

​On paper, this pairing breaks every rule of Wine 101. The heat of this dish -- the spiciness of both the marinade for the beef and the mole -- would overwhelm nearly any fine wine. The classic match would be ice-cold, dry beer served in an iced pony glass (perhaps even with a twist of lemon) ... More >>

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