This is our year to toast and thank the many heroes who contributed to our knowledge of wine. This month, we'll raise a glass to all the bartenders who acted as wine educators for us. We chose the 2021 Raventos i Blanc de Nit Cava wine for this salute because it was a frequent recommendation from many of these wine experts.
(It also comes in a half bottle, perfect for a lunchtime toast.)
Restaurants with great wine lists often have serious training for their staff. The bartenders who care for the wine and assist the waitstaff with it are often masters of the list. We have been very fortunate to have picked up bits and pieces of wine lessons sitting across their bars. There are far too many to name, and we fear we would leave someone out, so we will raise a glass to all of you. You know who you are!
Trying wines from different places, made with different grapes and produced by different methods, adds spice to our monthly ritual. Since 2007, we have raised a glass of sparkling wine to greet each new month!
With our sparkler of the month on March 1st, we mentioned that we had put The Food Lover's Guide to Wine on our book wish list. That afternoon, we received an email from the authors Karen Page & Andrew Dornenburg saying they would love to send us a review copy.
It arrived a few days later and hasn't made it to a bookshelf yet. It has spent a few nights beside the bed as Penny's relaxation reading, we've used it explore a couple of new wines, and we're planning to feature some recommended producers as our Sparkler of the Month.
Learn in various ways from a collection of great wine lovers.
If you were hanging outside our door, you might have heard us reading quotes from the book to one another. It has the greatest collection of quotes from wine lovers and wine experts you can imagine. Boston's own Cat Silirie is often cited.
Ed loves the pronunciation guide in the core listing of wines, grapes, and wine topics.
The system used to emphasize the importance of wine grapes, characteristics, and producers (by using bold and all caps in lists) is brillant and intuitive to use.
The end chapters on matching wines with foods, cuisines, and courses will have us exploring new options.
We love the gold boxes with great asides on topics. A few are already marked with page tabs.
Since these writers believe that the wine you like is the right wine for you, they've prepared a series of recommendations based on your own taste. If you like a flavor, for example almonds, they give you a list of wines to try. If you like a particular wine, they give you others with similar flavor profiles.
Host Linda Pelaccio began by covering the history of American Wine (the book contains a timeline) and then a discussion of the book that really gave us an insight to the authors' points of view and how this book would fit into our collection. Here's a link to that show.
Meet the authors and hear what some experts say about this book.
We are not only recommending this book to our readers, we'll be buying copies as gifts for wine-loving friends. It is a treasure and we expect it to look a bit worn and well-used pretty quickly. It may even suffer a few wine stains but we doubt that Karen and Andrew will mind.
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on our book wish list. That afternoon, we received an email from the authors Karen Page & Andrew Dornenburg saying they would love to send us a review copy. 
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