Category: Wine & Spirits

Soon Christmas will be upon us with families of various backgrounds joyously gathering throughout Shanghai to celebrate the most important western holiday. For some this is a spiritual day for reflection while for others it’s an occasion to eat and drink with abandon. The important role of food and wine during the Christmas holiday is well documented and over the years certain foods have become standard fare on the Christmas table. All you need to do is look at our newspaper to see the endless offerings of turkey, ham and other favored Christmas fare. While there’s nothing wrong with traditional dishes, to be different I’ll suggest some inspired Shanghai themed wining and dining ideas.

Memories of Halloween are among the happiest of all childhood memories.  Dressing up in outlandish costumes and roaming the neighborhood shouting “trick or treat” while collecting great quantities of candy. The modern Halloween celebration is more focused on children but this wasn’t always the case. In fact, the history of Halloween is filled with scary and often out-of-control celebrations.

My love for Champagne knows no bounds, unfortunately my budget is often more limited. What’s a lover of quality bubbles to do? The answer lies in Spain. CAVA is the name of Spanish wines made in the traditional or Champagne method where the second fermentation that gives the wines its bubbles happens in the bottle. We also call this bottle fermentation. Classy sparklers are made all over the wine world but perhaps the ones with the best price/value ratio are the CAVA wines of Spain.

Years ago I wrote a column promoting the idea that Spanish reds offer some of the best old world values in the world. This postulation is even truer today. While quality French wines and to a lesser but still significant degree quality Italian wines have progressively grown more costly, very good Spanish red wines are still very affordable. Even in Shanghai.

As Shanghai Daily’s wine columnist, I’d like to think they need me when they choose wines for an important event. The iDeal Shanghai Awards held last Tuesday proved this premise wrong. I still don’t know who choose the wines but despite my initial trepidation, I was most pleasantly surprised by the two wines served.

One of the first things to decide before writing a story is the angle. Good stories have clear and compelling angles. Attacking a loaded subject like coffee and wines demands some discipline. Why? Because at least 99.9 percent of food and wine experts will tell you they make appalling companions. The basic rule is that you stop drinking wine as soon as you start drinking coffee. But can coffee really have anything to do with wine? Can there be any harmonious relations between them? Here are three good angles.

Shanghai is home but as a wine writer I spend a great deal of time traveling to wine regions and wine events all over the globe.  Last weekend I was in Singapore to celebrate the Grandi Vini Group’s 25th Anniversary in the graceful colonial atmosphere of the Fullerton Hotel. Grandi Vini was established in 1987 in Rome by a group of leading wine producers from Italy’s most acclaimed wines regions with the goal of collectively marketing and selling their wines globally. The group now consists of eight wineries from six regions and is one of the most successful and long-lived wine groups of its kind anywhere. The member wineries export about 80 percent of their production to over 70 countries. Considering the independent nature of Italian people and companies, this cooperative effort has been no mean feat.

On February 14th lovers in Shanghai will brave the chill of winter and do their best to ignite sparks of passion and romance. Throughout history wine has been the preferred beverage to foster romance while warming your body and soul making it the perfect beverage for Valentine’s Day.

I first experienced ma-la hot pot about 25 years ago and like many lovers of this Sichuan treasure my culinary life was forever changed. For the uninitiated it’s hard to describe the unique and addictive qualities of this special meal. Much more than a dish, ma-la hot pot is an exhilarating communal culinary experience that uniquely challenges your senses. Ma-la hot pot is also a bonding experience and an essential rite of passage for lovers of spicy foods. During my frequent wine travels abroad, the first week away from home I happily savor all the local ingredients and dishes then sometime during the second week I start craving the flavors of China. The first night back I rush to a local eatery to experience real Chinese food. A ma-la restaurant is often my first stop.

Golden ages of great metropolises like wines are neither designed nor constructed for immortality. Instead they are temporal reflections of a need to appease, please or accommodate the times. When my colleagues at Shanghai Daily approached me to compose a wine column somehow related to the last golden age of Shanghai from the 19th century to the roaring 20’s and 30’s of the past century, I naively accepted the challenge. Despite the often tumultuous times of this age, the lights of Shanghai shone brightly and the city was often affectionately referred to as “the Paris of the East”.