WHAT ABOUT WINE?
Accumulated wine wisdom, tidbits and advice, plus some good, inexpensive wines to try:
• From Todd Williams, co-owner of Toad Hollow Vineyards, best-known for its $9 Eye of the Toad pinot noir rose (and who also makes a nifty $12 un-oaked chardonnay). “Most restaurant wine prices are unfair, and they must think their customers are idiots,” says Williams, who doesn’t understand why restaurants don’t try to sell more wine by lowering prices, instead of insisting on 300 or 400 percent markups.
• From Mark Bittman, the cookbook author of the eminently well-done “How to Cook Everything,” among many others: “I gave up writing about wine because it was rich people writing about wine for rich people. They didn’t care what was good as much as they cared about being part of the elite.”
• Chateau Ducla Entre-Deux-Mers 2002 ($8). This is real
• Avalon Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 ($10). Some of the best cabernet in the world comes from
• Worth reading: Wine critic Elin McCoy’s “The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker Jr. and the Reign of American Taste.” The book is the first full-scale biography of the man who changed wine writing and wine criticism, from his introduction of the 100-point rating system to his use of language. No one had ever called a wine “inky” before Parker.