Articles

Soil, not grapes, is the latest must-know when choosing a wine,” Bloomberg has proclaimed. Meanwhile, wine writer Alice Feiring has published a book which helps drinkers choose their tipple by “looking at the source: the ground in which it grows”. And there are now restaurants with wine lists organised not by grape, wine style or… 

THE BEST CRABS OF THE SEASON TODAY’S LESSON: The warming waters of Summer convince the crab population to shed its Winter armor and become briefly what we know as soft shells. This is the special time that you can easily enjoy the entire crab without the tough shell interfering. Today we will explore the tricks… 

The wine world has faced an ongoing debate over whether wine bottled with a cork is better than twist-off bottles and other non-cork packaging. On one side, you have the cork industry (a surprisingly vocal group) as well as plenty of traditionalists who truly believe cork is a key component to the wine experience. On… 

When we look back at Prohibition, we might be tempted to glorify the era from 1920 to 1933 as one of glitz, excess, and freewheeling fun in the face of an unnecessary law. But the origins behind the 18th amendment and the repercussions of its enforcement touch issues as far-ranging as racism, the war on drugs,… 

In the heart of Normandy’s Pays d’Auge region, about an hour’s drive inland from the D-Day beaches on France’s northern coast, lies the 200-person village of Camembert, surrounded by white-and-brown cows grazing in lush green pastures. It is here that, according to legend, a woman named Marie Harel sheltered a priest who, like many following… 

The travel host Anthony Bourdain, whose memoir “Kitchen Confidential” about the dark corners of New York’s restaurants started a career in television, died on Friday at 61. For the past several years, Mr. Bourdain hosted the show “Parts Unknown” on CNN and was working on an episode in Strasbourg, France, when he died, the network… 

You can’t copyright a recipe. It’s why the 23-year-old apprentice pharmacist who invented the banana split never got rich when Walgreen’s took the idea nationwide, or why chef Dominique Ansel trademarked the word “Cronut” to protect his donut fried from croissant dough but could do nothing to stop Dunkin’ Donuts from selling its own “Croissant… 

Non-vintage wine is an odd concept. If wine is made through annual cycles, culminating in an autumn harvest, it always has a vintage, right? Not in Champagne, where at least 75 percent of the production is labeled “NV,” or non-vintage. So how old is the juice in your Champagne bottle? Most of the time, there’s… 

Laboratory analyses can’t identify anything special about the water Hangar One Vodka Distillery collects from Bay Area fog to produce its limited edition Fog Point Vodka. But head distiller Caley Shoemaker can. She says it’s the taste of San Francisco. At the height of summer, when inland temperatures soar above 90 degrees, San Francisco is… 

A series of undulating mounds sinks into the grass, organic edges echoing the surrounding topography — a subterranean lair camouflaged to the specifications of a Bond villain. Inside, beyond the entranceway, a cavernous atrium beckons your neck to tilt back toward the rafters, to spot the lofted ceiling dimpled with 2,500 separate sections of curved… 

Aida Batlle grows coffee on her family’s farm in the hills surrounding El Salvador’s Santa Ana Volcano. Like generations before her, she had little use for the skin that encases the beans, so she’d turn it into cheap fertilizer or, more frequently, trash it. Then one day, walking past some husks drying in the sun, a smell hit… 

In May of 1995, Ruth Patras realized that something was wrong with her 5-week-old daughter, Ciara. Initially happy and healthy, about a month after Ciara was born, the whites of her eyes started to turn yellow. Over the next few days, the color deepened, and her appetite diminished. Patras took Ciara to her pediatrician, who…