Food & Wine September 2022

2020 KETTMEIR PINOT BIANCO ($22) This bright, crisp, lightly floral white from Alto Adige was a hit at my house this summer, and I intend to keep drinking it into the fall. It’s perfect for an herb-roasted chicken, a big green salad with lettuces from the farmers market, or just sitting outside on a balmy evening. 2020 LA GRANGE TIPHAINE NOUVEAU NEZ ($25) On a trip to Montlouis, one of the Loire Valley’s smallest wine regions, this past July, I drank more than one glass—hey, it was really hot!—of this lively pét-nat from La Grange Tiphaine’s Damien and Coralie Delecheneau. It will be just as refreshing as the weather slowly grows cooler, too. 2020 DOMAINE HUET LE HAUT-LIEU VOUVRAY SEC ($40) Huet is one of the great domaines of Vouvray, making world-class Chenin Blanc—both dry…

Now That’s Rich ATTENTION, SHOPPERS: Let’s talk about those ingredients in your grocery cart. Unless you’re a gazillionaire, you’ve been feeling the effects of inflation. That “whole paycheck” quip about Whole Foods prices hits a little different now, with the cost of staples like chicken, eggs, and milk up as much as 33% over last year, as of this writing. For the first time, I’ve been talking to my daughters about the true cost of food, and we’re becoming even more discerning about which restaurants we support. And while Food & Wine has never been a budget cooking magazine, we always try to give you good weight, to borrow a term from the writer John McPhee. We work to ensure every page—every recipe, cooking tip, wine recommendation, and travel itinerary—counts. Take the sustainable…

SINCE THE TIME humans first started drinking wine (nearly 8,000 years ago), they’ve had to figure out how to store it. When I started my very small collection of wine (er, two years ago), I searched for space-efficient storage methods that would keep my wine cool and happy—and hopefully safer than sitting on top of my fridge in my tiny, temperature-volatile New York apartment. I was frustrated; even the smallest wine fridges were too big. So I did as the Romans did and turned to stone to store my wine. In ancient times, wine was most often stored in large ceramic vessels. The Greeks called the vessel an amphora, the Romans a dolium, and they were made of fired clay. Producers would nestle these wine-filled vessels into the ground, allowing room…

I WAS STARTING TO BELIEVE I’d imagined the jelly. Kid brains are loopy and elastic, and that’s part of the magic of it all. It’s what allows us to while away summer afternoons on imaginary spaceships and pirate vessels, host invisible tea parties, talk to dragons, and be our weird, unbounded, wonderful selves. But wine jelly seemed like a cloud too far. In my memory, my sister and I (then in our tweens) and my parents would trundle down our suburban Kentucky street to Dr. Stine’s faux-Tudor home on the cul-de-sac, moving glacially so as not to tip our precious payload. When the door swung open to spill warm light and tipsy chatter onto the landing, before we could even wrestle off our coats, the hands descended, grabbing the Saran-Wrapped cups…

BUILDING THE PERFECT BOOZE A celebrity spirit for the non-celebrities among us THE ADVANTAGE TO OCCUPYING the very lowest rung of celebrity is getting to ascend a well-tested ladder. So now that every famous person has launched a celebrity spirit—from George Clooney’s Casamigos tequila, which sold for $700 million, to UFC President Dana White’s banana-flavored whiskey, Howler Head—the systems were all in place for me to create my own. Still, I wasn’t sure the market was fully saturated enough for me to wade into. So I asked brand developer Steve Luttmann how famous a person needs to be to launch a brand. A million followers on social media as a baseline, he said, but there were work-arounds. For instance, he launched Hercules Mulligan, a rum-and-rye blend named after a war hero who has…

Celebrity-affiliated wines and spirits can be a hit-or-miss proposition. At their worst, they’re little more than vanity projects and questionable brand extensions. But when done right—with care, expertise, and passion—the results can be fantastic. Just look at Inglenook, which was purchased by Francis Ford Coppola in 1975 in a decrepit state. Today, nearly half a century later, it’s considered to be among the top tier of Napa Valley producers. These days, it seems as if every other week heralds the arrival of a new bottle from a well-known actor, musician, or reality star that you just have to taste. But one question always remains: Which ones are worth your money? Well, we’ve done the hard work for you. After tasting more celeb-affiliated wines and spirits than we can count, we happily recommend…