wine
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Feminism
Craft Beverage People: Do Better.
CN: Slurs; rape jokes; racist and sexist langage and images (mostly in links) It’s no secret that the artisanal food and beverage criticism field is a pretty privileged bunch. After all, to get into it you have to have disposable income, no ailments or conditions that would preclude imbibing a significant amount of alcohol or eating a wide range of…
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Skepticism
To Have and To Hold
In Part 1 of this post, I discussed what happens as a wine ages and its unique relationship with air. In this follow-up, I’ll explain what makes certain wines age-worthy and how to keep your wines happy for however long you can wait before drinking them. Selecting Wines for Now and Later As I mentioned in my previous post, most…
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Skepticism
Drink Now?
Every once in awhile somebody shows me a bottle of wine they found in their basement and asks if it’s worth anything. I’m always excited to take a look, out of curiosity, but it’s not because I suspect they’re harboring some fortune-making collector’s bottle. I just really love tasting spoiled wine. It’s fascinating, to me, how air can be wine’s…
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Meta Stuff
Get To Know Your Skepchicks: Julia
I am a lucky lady for a whole bushel load of reasons. One reason in particular is that I get to meet a lot of wonderful, brilliant people. And every so often one of these amazing people lets me photograph them. And on a very good day they also let me pick their brain so that I can learn even…
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Skepticism
Twist and Shout
The squeaky anticipation that comes with uncorking a bottle of wine is akin to the tactile sensation of placing a needle on a spinning record: romantic, nostalgic, exciting, evocative, and above all, a vestige of a bygone era. But with every snap-crackle-pop murmur to life as a record player finds its groove, that needle is slowly destroying your record, and…
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Skepticism
Everything I Know About Pairings I Learned From Wine and Popcorn
Pictured, my friend Bridget O’Malley’s genius pairing: rosé champagne and Twizzlers. Every year in wine media I see posts about what wines to pair with Thanksgiving dinner. With Superbowl Sunday. With Easter ham. With Flag Day. Even though I think people obsess about pairings a lot less than they used to, pairing advice, much of which I find completely useless…
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Featured
My Sulfite Headache
“I think I’m allergic to sulfites. This wine gave me a headache.” “Well, how much did you drink?” “… a bottle?” It happened so many times during my time as a wine salesperson that it had become one of our most standard jokes, some of us even going so far as to just cut out the second line: “This wine…
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Skepticism
Wine Pricing
Last month, the NYT reported that wine dealer Rudy Kurniawan was convicted of fraud after successfully passing off regular wine he’d mixed in his kitchen as sought-after, top-end bottles. This man swindled wine collectors out of large amounts of money, made a mockery of those who are supposed to be able to catch these things, and raised an obvious question:…
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