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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Chang-rae Lee on sea urchin in Seoul
Janet Malcolm reopens "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook"
Julian Barnes on being a man in the kitchen
Nora Ephron on the perfect pastrami
Madhur Jaffrey on honey and green mangoes
Adam Gopnik on a culinary game
Elizabeth Kolbert on the risks of dining out
From 1968, M. F. K. Fisher on her first taste of caviar
Joan Acocella on how food shaped history
A tasting menu of food writing from the archive
A selection of food-related cartoons
Before we get onto the question of whether experienced wine drinkers can actually tell the difference between red wine and white, I should probably tell you a little something about my background in the field. I have never denied that when I'm trying to select a bottle of wine in a liquor store I'm strongly influenced by the picture on the label. (I like a nice mountain, preferably in the middle distance.) When I was growing up, in Kansas City, Missouri, I didn't know about people drinking wine at meals that were not being eaten in celebration of a major anniversary. I assume that my neighbors would have been as startled as I to hear about such carryings on. Years later, after I'd moved to New York, a newspaperman in my home town did me a great favor, and when I wondered aloud what I could get for him, a friend in New York--a sophisticated friend, who considered himself something of a gourmet, now that I think of it--said that a case of wine was always appreciated. I phoned the newspaperman's son-in-law in Kansas City to ask if he could find out, discreetly, what sort of wine was particularly fancied in his in-laws' house, and the son-in-law got back to me with a question of his own: "Does Wild Turkey count?" These days, I do drink wine, although if I'm at a meal at which drink orders are being given by the glass, I am likely to say to the waiter, "What sort of fancy beer do you have on tap?"
I have spent a certain amount of time in the company of wine cognoscenti, but I wouldn't claim that I have distinguished myself on those occasions. Many years ago, for instance, a winemaker I know was kind enough to invite me to the "barrel tasting" of California wines which used to be held annually at the Four Seasons restaurant, in New York--an event that was considered a very hot ticket in the wine game. At the table, many glasses of wine were put in front of us. Then someone who had his mouth very close to the microphone talked about each wine in what I believe scholars would call excruciating detail--the type of vines that had been grafted together to produce it, for instance, and how long it had been in stainless-steel vats or oak barrels. Displaying manners that I thought would have made my mother proud, I drank what was placed before me--not noticing, as I glanced around to see whether more food was ever going to appear, that everyone else was just sipping. I have since heard two or three versions of what transpired that evening, but they do not differ...
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