Subject: Wine

• Chuck This

  July 3, 2007

• Pairing Off: Microwave Popcorn

  November 12, 2008

• Pairing Off: Turkey TV Dinners

  Photo: Patrick Michels There are, essentially, two rules to Thanksgiving—well, three if you include football: turkey and lots of it. Of course, not everyone makes it to the big family gathering. Police and firefighters must remain on duty, truck drivers and…um…others, may find themselves stuck with a TV dinner and a bottle of, well, whatever goes with microwave turkey.

  November 19, 2008

• Pairing Off: Grilled Cheese

  For a brief moment I regretted this week's pairing. Not only did my first attempt turn into a smoldering slab of charcoal--oozing orange stuff and damn near sending the smoke alarm into a shrieking fit--but the wine experts I consulted gave me a right grilling."What cheese," asked Lin Sellman of Goody Goody's Addison store. "What kind of bread? With butter or without butter?"Geez."But that's the beauty of grilled cheese," Ben Wilemon of Farpointe Cellars in Frisco chimes in. "You pair to the che

  January 14, 2009

• Pairing Off: General Tsao's Chicken

  Forgive us if we've discussed this popular dish before--which we have. But the general does outrank Colonel Sanders and his non-spicy, unsticky, broccoli-less chicken. Although the spelling may vary, just about every Chinese restaurant with a delivery option cooks up some form of General Tsao's. Typically it's built around fried meat, a sweet and sour "wine" sauce, vegetables and those explosive little dried chili's. Some kitchens prefer a tamer version, however--emphasizing the sugary red

  January 21, 2009

• Pairing Off: Frozen Fish Sticks

  Patrick Michels/geishaboy500More than any other "normal" food we've paired with wine thus far in this series, fish sticks scared the bejeezus out of the experts."God," mutters Jim Fleming of Sigel's Elite, shaking his head. "Oh, man," exclaims Majestic's Scott Loudder at the thought. "You come up with some odd ones."But when you think about it, frozen fish sticks are merely a combination of two potentially wine-friendly dishes: fried fish and fish cake, a Japanese favorite probably best served w

  February 25, 2009

• Wine Rocks

  Rock stars plus alcohol can add up to a lot of things. But when you add organic grocery stores to the rock and booze equation, the sum must certainly change, right? Guess we'll find out when Maynard James Keenan makes an appearance at the Whole Foods Market in Plano from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., March 23 where he'll be signing bottles of wine from his 80-Acre Arizona Stronghold Vineyard. You could write this off as just another rocker's vanity project, but Keenan is an honest-to-goodness vintner. T

  March 19, 2009

• Wines For Everyday Purposes? So We Can Cross Scope Off The Grocery List?

  Hopefully the fact that Black Oak's initials are "B.O." is just an unfortunate coincidence. Beverage distribution behemoth Ben E. Keith is branching out with another vino offering. And unlike the distributor's inaugural label, Solemar, it's not one they make themselves. The family-owned Chateau Diana, located in the Dry Creek Valley region of California, offers three brands. First described in the press release is the "quick to market and value driven" Black Oak, which offers a Cabernet Sauvigno

  March 27, 2009

• Wine Snubs

  October 9, 2003

• Killian's California Red...And White

  Souverain's Winemaker's Reserve Cabernet, one of the wines to be featured at Jasper's tomorrow night.Beer pairing dinners have been the rage of late, but apparently some people still do things the old-fashioned way. Kent Rathbun's Jasper's (7161 Bishop Rd., Plano) is offering a four-course wine pairing dinner with Ed Killian--good name for the maker of a mass produced "Irish" red beer, although he's really the head winemaker of Souverain Winery in California's Alexander Valley. The dinner is $75

  April 7, 2009

• Hey, Man, Can I Get $3?

  August 28, 2008

• Not Quite Ripe

  Send it back: Bottle Shock's corked

  August 7, 2008

• Big D Dines

  April 17, 2008

• Get a Cru

  April 3, 2008

• Review: Charlie Palmer at The Joule

  March 27, 2008

• Happy Birthday, G.

  September 13, 2007

• Meat Market

  January 26, 2006

• Wine Me, Dine Me

  April 6, 2006

• Tasting Colleyville

  October 19, 2006

• Good Wine, Good Records

  May 17, 2007

• Wine Graft

  tk tk tk

  April 20, 2006

• Apple Juju

  Frankie Carabetta brings N.Y.C. to Big D

  January 26, 2006

• Kiss, Kiss

  Asian fusion stumbles at Café Japon

  January 12, 2006

• Is Screwing Hip?

  We twist open 2005 for a nip. Is this a sign of things to come?

  December 29, 2005

• French Feint

  Gallic is far from galling at The French Room

  November 24, 2005

• The Swill-O-Meter

  We Swirl. We Sniff. We Swill.

  November 10, 2005

• Sour Grapes

  November 10, 2005

• Just for Kix?

  Hotel dining in Richardson? About what you'd expect.

  October 27, 2005

• Drink Up

  Loosened Texas laws spawn a litter of Dallas street wineries. Ready for Preston Hollow Pinot Grigio?

  August 4, 2005

• Savor Sever

  Savory says goodbye

  April 28, 2005

• Go Dog Go

  Taste's urban bistro has bite and bark

  March 31, 2005

• Grecian Formula

  After a decade, Ziziki's still going strong

  January 13, 2005

• Best Wine List

  Lola the Restaurant

  October 14, 2004

• Best Wine/Liquor Store

  Pogo's

  October 14, 2004

• Vine Cuts

  Can cheap bastards find good wine?

  October 7, 2004

• Think Pink

  Do any wines go well with summer heat?

  August 19, 2004

• Grape Gab

  The wine glass is half-full when it comes to reds, survey says

  March 18, 2004

• Where's the Boot?

  Vino & Basso needs to merge its split personality

  February 26, 2004

• Eddie's Red Adventure

  Eddie Merlot's is a cliché with elegance

  September 18, 2003

• Pairing Off: Cheez Its

  Patrick Michels/Petroleumjelliffe, via FlickrOne thing that becomes clear, as we move through this series, is that pairings can be a bit fussy.The nonchalant approach of discarding a specific recommendation in favor of something easier to find within the same style doesn't always work--at least not when you're dealing with beasts such as processed food. And people who truly understand wine aren't always thoroughly familiar with, say, Spam. Or with this week's subject: Cheez It crackers.Notwithst

  April 29, 2009

• Pairing Off: Orange Chicken (From A Grocery Store)

  Patrick MichelsWhen asking about dishes considered unsuitable--or at least unusual--for wine, the experts generally push me toward something fruity and acidic.Makes sense, really: these are the two elements most capable of battling excess salt, wallowing fat and other banes of wine pairing. So when I approached the woman at Majestic on Oak Lawn looking for something to go with orange chicken from a bag picked out of a Tom Thumb frozen food aisle, she almost immediately (after the raised eyebrow

  May 13, 2009

• 10 Questions: James Tidwell Of Four Seasons

  He was the 100th American wine professional to earn the title of Master Sommelier, but that's not the only thing Tidwell can be proud of.After graduating from LSU with a degree in international trade and finance, this son of a small town preacher set off for culinary school at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America. He and Barbara Werley of Pappas Bros. are, in fact, the only CIA grads to earn Master Sommelier designation. Tidwell also founded the Texas Sommelier Conference with Werley's

  May 29, 2009

• The Weather Is Vine

  Last night, Channel 8 Meteorologist Greg Fields and Rick Boyer of Robert Mondavi hosted a small dinner at Abacus to introduce the legendary California brand's new Solaire line of wines. Boyer, who is gearing up for his 32nd vineyard harvest later in the year, is the winemaker behind the new Santa Lucia Highlands Chardonnay and Central Coast Cabernet Sauvignon...but we were interested in another question entirely: why was a baby-faced local weather personality hosting the party?

  June 24, 2009

• Cheap-o Vino

  Interest you in a stack of wine?Summertime wine buying often leads to an irksome game tug-of-war between your mind and your wallet. You love your friends (well, most of them anyway; at least you want to be nice in hopes you'll get something out of them someday), and you don't want to serve them swill until they've had a few and can't tell the difference.But we're not talkin' high-end entertaining here. Vacation days and impromptu gatherings call for something cheap and chic, and we've found a

  July 8, 2009

• Peanut War

  August 6, 2009

• Sips And (Sound)Bites And Almost Fist Fights

  Back to school, with drinking--and threats--allowed: a panel discussion at the drinklocalwines.com conference.​This past Saturday, a sold-out crowd gathered at Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts in North Dallas for the first-ever DrinkLocalWine.com Conference. Hosted by website founders Jeff Siegel and Dave McIntyre and the Texas Department of Agriculture's Go Texan program, the event drew wine makers, wine writers, bloggers and enthusiasts from far and wide for discussions on the topi

  August 17, 2009

• Handle The Proof: An Oregon Grappa

  ​Most people first encounter grappa in the form of a cheap, punishing brand--the taste of cleaning fluids and jet exhaust being the gentler characteristics.Generally it's also their last encounter with the spirit conjured from the pulpy leftovers of wine pressings. That's right, the unique flavor of grappa (or marc in France) comes from pulverized grape skin, split seeds and the occasional scrap of bark or snip of grape leaf collectively called 'pomace' in the wine trade--and it can turn into

  August 21, 2009

• Grapevine Uncorked

  September 17, 2009

• Pairing Off: Pork Rinds

  Patrick Michels/foodistablog​Each week, Pairing Off attempts to find just the right bottle of wine to go with ordinary food.There's gonna be a moment when you think "this is the low point--it can't get any worse." Of course, intellectually you know it can get much worse. But the little speech, however mistaken, helps you cope with the situation.Some months ago I went through this process when pairing wine to pan seared Spam. "Can't get worse," I said to myself at the time. Yet this week I had

  October 7, 2009

• 7-Eleven vs Barefoot: War Of The Wines

  Alex Flores​Yesterday it came to our attention that 7-Eleven planned to introduce their own wine brand, priced at a Thunderbird-like $3.99 a bottle--that's right, $3.99 for .75 of Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon in glass with a real artificial cork. No screw-tops for wine this fancy.They call their brand Yosemite Road, as it is cellared by the Yosemite Road Vineyards in Livermore, California--somewhere between San Jose and Modesto, in other words. But local 7-Elevens already stock a Modesto w

  November 5, 2009