Category: Wine & Spirits

Quick question – what’s the least known and least expensive of the world’s great wines? The answer is Sherry! From bone dry to super sweet there’s a Sherry for every occasion, especially Christmas. Sherry is a fortified wine from Jerez, a magical city of 3,000 years history and tradition that’s located in southwestern Spain. In fact, the Jerez-Xeres-Sherry D.O. wine region is the southernmost wine region in Europe. From the sun-baked white soils of the Sherry Triangle, a wine growing area that is bordered by the three ancient city-towns of Jerez, Sanlucar and El Puerto, comes some of the world’s most intriguing and distinctive wines.

Fresh back from my Spanish wine and food trip, my memories of tasting beautiful wines and cheeses are vivid. The pairing of wines and cheeses is always a good idea and especially so in the cold winter months. Whether at a meal or as an afternoon snack with friends, this is an ideal way to enjoy wines. Shanghai, like northern Spain, shares cold winter days when a good wine and fragrant cheese can warm your spirit as well as your body.

Wine and travel have long been great partners. For those of us who make their living writing and talking about wines, travel is not a luxury but an essential. When you read this column, I’ll be flying back to Shanghai from a one week trip to Spain’s historic first kingdom, the region of Castilla y Leon. This expansive region in the north of Spain produces many of Spain’s greatest wines. Rolling mountains, low flying clouds and valleys filled with vines provide visitors with a striking, somewhat wild and windswept landscape. These influences of nature also make the region perfect for making high quality red wines. Castilla y Leon is a huge place with nine major wine regions. The most famous region is D.O. Ribera del Duero, while D.O. Toro is the new “rock star” region with hoards of adoring wine drinking fans.

When addressing wine professionals and wine enthusiasts around the world, I am fond of saying that ultimately we are in the business of creating memories. For the thousands of wine events that I have planned and conducted over the years, my goal has always been to create a special memory that participants will never forget. It’s not enough to have everyone enjoy the wine and food and then a mere two weeks later forget what they drank.

When paring wines with Chinese food in Shanghai there are two unavoidable realities. Firstly, red wine is quite popular and secondly, there are many delicious seafood dishes. Dare we break the historical anecdote, “white wines with fish and red wines with meat”? My answer is an emphatic yes. While it is true that most white wines tend to pair better with fish and red wines with red meat, there are several delicious exceptions.

Wine knowledge necessitates a familiarity of different grapes. One of my favorite white wine grapes is Sauvignon Blanc. This variety is used to make some of the world’s greatest and costly white wines as well as good value wines that feature a range of different characteristics depending on the climate and soil. In general, wine people like to use words like crisp, fresh, dry, steely and aromatic to describe wines made from Sauvignon Blanc. If you’re searching for a deliciously stimulating alternative to Chardonnay, then I highly recommend this variety.

No one loves Champagne more than I do; I absolutely adore the stuff but not the price tag. The cost of Champagne makes it a wine almost exclusively for special occasions, not everyday drinking. What are lovers of bubbles to do? The answer is Prosecco, Italy’s charming and affordable sparkling wine. First let’s learn a little about this wine.

Have a spicy tooth? Do you crave the scintillating spicy dishes of the Szechuan, Hunan, Thai or Korean cuisines? The topic of pairing wines with spicy foods always creates some controversy. On one hand you have some “old-school” wine connoisseurs, including some of the most famous contemporary western wine critics who insist wine is too delicate for spicy foods. They council a beer or when backed in a corner may suggest a Riesling or Gewürztraminer wine. Quite frankly, I believe this to be a “cop-out” and an outdated opinion by many western wine specialists who know little of Asian cuisines and spices.

My sincere greetings to all the readers of Shanghai Daily. I’m excited to have this new column and be able to share my global wine adventures with readers in Shanghai. My goal is to help make wine appreciation easier and more fun. I will also introduce some of my favorite wines and wine styles as well as wine and food combinations that you can enjoy right here in Shanghai. I also look forward to helping readers discover new regions and styles of wine that will surprise you with their quality and reasonable prices. This is an exciting time for wine lovers in Shanghai as more and more wines are available in Shanghai. Let’s discover them together.

Later this week, Beaujolais Nouveau madness hits Shanghai. Therefore it’s a good time to take an honest look at this much-hyped and often misunderstood wine. This is not a great or classic wine and most wine snobs won’t go near a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. But that’s what makes this wine so fun. Wine people tend to take wines and themselves too seriously, so I find the simple exuberance and easy-going nature of Beaujolais Nouveau refreshing. The wines aren’t bad either.