Sip & Savor | Spring 2021 by Rosebud Media

Sp r i n g 2 0 2 1

ADVERTISING INDEX Cartwright’s Market .....................................8

Luna Mexican Cuisine .................................3

Jackson and Josephine Counties’ Guide to Wining and Dining!

Crackin & Stackin......................................17

Point Pub and Grill ....................................19

El Molcajete Mexican Grill .........................21

Porters Restaurant and Bar .........................5

S TA F F

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Shoji’s of Medford.....................................10

CEO & Publisher: Steven Saslow

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Director of Advertising & Marketing: Scott Sussman

Jacksonville Inn ........................................26

Wayback Burgers ......................................15

Design & Production: Paul Bunch Retail Sales Supervisor: Laura Perkins

ON THE COVER

Sip & Savor is published quarterly by the Rosebud Media Advertising Department 111 N Fir St., Medford, OR 97501 General Information: (541) 776-4422

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Questions? Please contact the Rosebud Media Advertising Department at (541) 776-4422

Sip & Savor ▪ Spring 2021

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Spring 2021 ▪ Sip & Savor

Online wine sales continue to grow,

but can they—or should they—replace local shops? by Dave McIntyre

Special to The Washington Post

Almost from the start of the pandemic lockdowns nearly a year ago, we heard that U.S. consumers were buying more wine online than ever before. We were purchasing from traditional bricks-andmortar retailers as well as dedicated online platforms such as Wine.com. Drizly and other home-delivery apps saved us a trip to the store and brought wine, beer and spirits to our doors. Direct shipping - wine sent from producers or retailers straight to your home has a long, fraught history that is not yet been resolved. I first wrote about the issue for The Washington Post in 1996, a full 12 years before I started writing this column. Advocates of direct shipping won a major Supreme Court ruling in 2004, but that left some issues unresolved. A consumer’s ability to order wine from an outof-state retailer and have it shipped to her home is still being litigated in courts and argued in state legislatures. And consumers are not always winning. On the positive side, online sales are up. We bought everything online last year, from hand sanitizer to toilet paper to cabernet. According to Sovos ShipCompliant, a company that helps wineries comply with the myriad laws and regulations states throw in the way of free commerce in wine, the direct-to-consumer (or DtC, in industry parlance) sales channel increased 27% in 2020, the largest yearly increase ever. And it wasn’t just wine fiends buying expensive, hard-to-find bottles. The average bottle price dropped 9.5% to just under $37, and shipments of wines priced under $30 increased by more than 41%. So who are we buying from? Online sales platforms often disappear as quickly as they emerge; Wine.com seems securely established as an online store. Wine “clubs” such as Winc, First Leaf and Bright Cellars use algorithms and short quizzes about whether you like your coffee black or with cream and sugar to point you to obscure labels they think you’ll like. Dry Farm Wines offers organic and natural wines. Sip Wines, an online platform launched in October largely as a response to the pandemic, tags wineries as sustainable or organic, socially responsible, led by women, family-owned and first-generation small business.

Sip & Savor ▪ Spring 2021

“We wanted to feature small wineries and help them tell their stories,” says Justine DiPrete, who co-founded Sip Wine with fellow tech entrepreneur Clay Heins. Sip acts as an online sales platform for smaller wineries that are available through traditional retail channels but not available everywhere. So it gives wineries a wider reach to consumers, and consumers who want to support family owned, women-led, socially responsible and organic wineries a path to find them. Sip Wines carries wines from California, Oregon, Washington and New York. Naked Wines saw its sales increase 90% in the first half of 2020, compared with the year before, says CEO Nick Devlin. “You can pinpoint the day when Americans got serious about covid,” Devlin told me. “On March 16, we saw day over day our number of new members doubled, and then on March 17, it doubled again.” The company’s revenue grew 90% from April through September and has continued on a similar rate

since, he said. Naked Wines, established in Britain in 2008 and launched in the United States in 2013, has an innovative model similar to crowdfunding. The company also operates in Australia, and has about 800,000 members overall. Those members, who the company calls “angels,” contribute regularly into a fund that’s like a noninterest bank account they can use to buy wine. The company supports winemakers in several countries around the world, helping them with the investment, regulatory compliance and marketing. The winemakers have freedom to make innovative wines, and the “angels” can buy small-production, exclusive wines that are not available through normal retail channels. Daryl Groom, a former winemaker with Penfolds in Australia and Geyser Peak in California, is perhaps Naked Wines’s best-known winemaker, marketing his DRG line of wines through the platform. Ana Diogo-Draper, winemaker at Artesa Vineyards and Winery in California’s Napa Valley, uses Naked Wines to produce her own wines from Spanish and Portuguese grape varieties grown in the Sierra Foothills of California, as well as a rosé from her native Portugal. “The online business model allows us to focus on the winemaking, leaving aside the marketing and sales,” she says. “The hurdle to entry is so high” for individual winemakers, said Matt Parish, who managed several wine brands for beverage behemoths Constellation Brands and Treasury Wine Estates before joining Naked Wines. Parish says he also enjoys interacting online with customers who buy and rate his wines. Will local retail wine stores disappear like bookstores as online sales grow? I hope not. An algorithm cannot replace a conversation with a retailer who has tasted every wine in his store or remembers what she sold you on your last visit. And I hope we never lose the serendipity of visiting a store and tasting a wine we never would have thought to try. But I’m all for greater choice and selection in what we can buy.■

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Spring 2021 ▪ Sip & Savor

The new dining reality:

Shorter menus, quicker meals – and ugly-delicious dishes by Tom Sietsema

Let’s walk down memory lane and inhale the joys of Pasjoli, the Santa Monica restaurant introduced by chef Dave Beran in 2019. The stars of the show included a whole pressed duck, delivered atop a teak trolley, and a chocolate souffle graced with fresh vanilla bean ice cream. Suffice it to say, the coronavirus pandemic rained on the restaurant’s party. Now the only way diners can order the dramatic duck or souffle is as a meal kit - some assembly required at home. “Tableside anything,” even pouring water, is discouraged under the county’s pandemic guidelines, says the chef. Every departure from his original dream was made to keep his staff employed, he says. “No one is going to order a $68 steak to go,” he thought when the pandemic emptied his dining room last year. Beran replaced eight ounces of dry-aged rib-eye with the same amount of hanger steak for $30. “Fancy food doesn’t travel well,” the chef says. So his dishes became more rustic (cassoulet was a recent possibility), and portions grew, giving customers the option of leftovers. “We’ve gone from pressed duck served tableside to a glorified cheese sandwich,” he says - and from a menu with 32 dishes to a dozen. Almost a year into what insiders liken to an extinction event for the industry, with 110,000 restaurants closed during the pandemic, diners are adjusting to the reality of fewer menu choices, briefer dining times, online ordering and dishes whose looks take a back seat to taste. “I want something that gives me a hug, not a challenge,” says Beran.

Sip & Savor ▪ Spring 2021

Some changes are apt to become permanent. “Gone are the days when I baked hundreds of pastries and hope people arrive,” says Kristen Hall, the pastry chef and co-owner behind Bandit Patisserie and the Essential, both in Birmingham, Ala. “Now they preorder.” That reduces the risk of waste, she says, and “creates something [for patrons] to look forward to.” At NiHao, an exciting Chinese addition to Baltimore, pastry chef Pichet Ong agrees about advance ordering, which helps with budget control and also promotes speedy pickup. “People don’t want to wait,” says Ong, known for his many-layered matcha cake. To avoid lingering, “we assign pickup times.” Diners are getting dishes that

chefs never thought they’d serve. “We blew up the menu during the great pause,” says chef Victor King, Hall’s business partner at the Essential. While the restaurant has stuck with its theme of comfort food, the selections now include things previously served during staff meal, or dishes that employees were cooking or ordering for themselves at home: “a lot of Chinese and Indian takeout,” says King. Enter fried rice with collard stem kimchi or lamb bacon, and heirloom carrot curry, “comforting things that travel well.” Dishes that originally helped fill seats don’t necessarily pass muster. Beef tartare on a giant tater tot? “You wouldn’t want to eat that 45 minutes later” at home, says the chef. A fixed-price menu has helped

save the French-inspired Bell’s restaurant in Los Alamos, Calif., owned by chef Daisy Ryan and her husband, Greg. Like Beran, the veterans of the high-end Per Se in New York asked themselves how they could retain staff in the crisis. The answer was a reservation-only menu for $65 a person. “We can’t rely on a 2 1/2-hour dinner where a couple has a couple glasses of wine” and maybe splits a course, says Daisy Ryan. “That time is over.” Bell’s has also eliminated tipping, but added a 20% service fee. “Nothing is the same as before,” says Ryan. The pandemic has “forced best business practices,” she says. “We are so much more profitable than we’ve ever been with a la carte,” a strategy to which she “can’t see ever going back.”

d Bell’s s, Calif., yan and e Beran, h-end Per hemselves taff in as a for $65 on a 2 a couple wine” and ays Daisy r.” Bell’s ping, but . “Nothing ays Ryan. ed best says. “We table than la carte,” “can’t see

About time, says Alex Susskind, professor of food and beverage management at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. Finally, he says, “restaurants have figured out how to raise prices and pass the cost of doing business on to the consumer,” as airlines and hotels have in the past. The pandemic, he says, is “an opportunity for restaurants to improve labor relations - pay more to staff - and try to renegotiate the fundamental elements of their business.” Landlords and suppliers need restaurants as much as restaurants need them. While diners have embraced some changes—who would have thought so many of us would be making reservations to eat outside in winter?— restaurants aspire to hang on to what made them draws in the first place. Beran, an alumnus of the experimental Alinea in Chicago and a James Beard Foundation award winner, still keeps tweezers in his kitchen, but he’s not chasing Instagram likes. “Beautiful food will never save bad flavor,” he says, “but delicious food will always save an ugly dish.” Even so, says Beran, he pulled from Pasjoli’s takeout menu the tomato stuffed with tuna tartare, a popular appetizer that tends to roll around and break apart in transport. “The trick is to not make things look cheap, but not cost a fortune, either.” One of his successes is coq au vin packaged with a light pastry cover and herbs and garlic butter that customers can use to finish the dish at home - “chicken pot pie, basically,” says the chef. As for a lot of establishments, takeout was a big switch for the

44-year-old Rainbow Lodge in Houston. “We’re not the kind of place where you do that: Click, click, click and pick up a bag of food,” says owner Donnette Hansen. “People are taking a risk going out, and I appreciate that. I don’t want to lose all the hospitality touches.” So the dining destination continues to offer a printed menu on “thick card stock that doesn’t feel cheap” and salt and pepper in shakers rather than paper packets. No one will tell patrons they can’t linger, either. “That’s a total turnoff - not to say we’re going to stand around

says the chef, who kept just half his crew and switched from a la carte to a fixed-price list last fall, when the restaurant reopened for indoor dining. Langhorne advises diners with special requests to email in advance, “but nobody does that,” leaving him with “less ability in the middle of service to crank something out.” The days of people camping out at their table are mostly history, done in by requests from restaurateurs to limit the time diners spend eating and drinking, when masks are removed. Ninety minutes for two, basically the

“Beautiful food will never save bad ﬂavor, but delicious food will always save an ugly dish.” hugging you for two hours.” The big change? “People sitting outside” the restaurant, says Hansen. “They never did that before,” not in the Texas heat. The lodge, which sits next to a creek, invested $120,000 on new stone walls and enhanced sound and lighting systems. Looking ahead, the owner expects even “the ladies who lunch and guys in suits” to continue dining in the open air. Elsewhere, fussy diners, or those with dietary restrictions, are hearing “sorry” more often. “Previously, we just wanted to make you happy,” says Jeremiah Langhorne, chef-owner of the Dabney, Washington’s ode to the Mid-Atlantic. He also had “a huge palette from which to choose” and plenty of staff to customize dishes. “It’s so much more difficult now,”

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industry norm, is common. The difference between now and the past is that often the restaurant makes an explicit printed or verbal appeal to eat and leave. “Time restrictions will probably stick going forward,” says Susskind from Cornell. Guests want to spend less time on average - a trend he says emerged pre-pandemic and has accelerated, particularly with millennials and Gen Z’ers. The exception: high-end dining. People who have been stuck at home forever, away from cosseting servers and sommeliers, probably don’t want to speed-eat a tasting menu. Otherwise, says Susskind, “less is more will kick in.” Nick Bognar, one of nine national chefs to receive Food & Wine’s Best New Chef honor last year, was used to playing to

a full house at Indo in St. Louis, which riffs on the backgrounds of his Korean and Filipino cooks as well as his Thai heritage and his family’s long-running Japanese restaurant, Nippon Tei. The signature dish is Issan hamachi, precise cuts of Japanese fish with Thai accents of fish sauce, coconut, yuzu paste and chile oil. Until the pandemic, his food rarely left the restaurant in a box. Now, there are slow nights, and “to-go is here to stay.” To encourage customers who couldn’t enjoy his brand in person, Bognar added lower-priced items, including a tuna poke bowl that “we wouldn’t have done before,” and suspended the $150 omakase menu at Indo’s counter. “You can’t do it at tables,” he says. “It loses its appeal.” The surprise beneficiaries since the pandemic have been diners who don’t eat meat. Since “vegetables are cheaper than imported fish,” Bognar has added a Japanese pumpkin green curry and charred purple cauliflower coated with spicy naan jim sauce and finished with candied peanuts. And local ingredients (pork jowl) have taken the place of some things from far away (toro). The meat enjoys the fattiness of the tuna, says Bognar, who cures the pork, finishes it with a blow torch, and serves the meat as sashimi. Labor is getting extra scrutiny, too. Beran raises a question: Does Pasjoli need three people pouring water? “We’re discussing the value of each employee and what they can contribute.” In the Before Times, shortcuts were frowned on CONTINUED ON PAGE 8

on local restaurant & winery gift certificates!

On Monday, March 22, go to SOGiftCards.com and find gift certificates from dozens of local restaurants, wineries, and local businesses for 10% off face value. On Tuesday, they will be 20% off, and so on until the final day of the sale on Friday, March 26, when all remaining gift certificates will be 50% off. Buy as many as you like, but don’t wait too long - the certificate to your favorite local business may be gone!

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Questions? Please contact the Rosebud Media Advertising Department at (541) 776-4422 Spring 2021 ▪ Sip & Savor

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and one cook might spend eight hours chopping onions for French onion soup, a task that Beran says can be done with a Robot Coupe in 20 minutes. Touch-free QR codes and online menus might seem impersonal compared to a printed list or, rarer now, dishes explained by an actual waiter, but Susskind welcomes the innovation. “I look at technology as a layer of service.” The ever-resilient industry is trying to find silver linings. At the Dabney, “fewer dishes allow us to focus” on the big picture, says Langhorne. Susskind, pointing to online shops and markets, says, “Restaurants are expanding their businesses in ways they never did before.” Want to entertain at home like Washington chef Eric Ziebold and his wife and business partner, Celia Laurent? Last month, the couple started selling scented candles, linens and pantry items through their Kinship Collection. The idea, Beran says, is to “give customers new reasons to come back.” Over the summer Pasjoli began serving lunch for the first time, on a new front patio, and started offering dog treats at the host stand - relocated outside, of course. Bognar figures life will feel somewhat normal when he brings back his intimate omakase. “When I can hand food right across the counter” to expectant diners, he says, “I’ll start it up.” ■

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You like to drift off to podcasts. Your partner prefers silence.

Headphones offer a compromise. by Allyson Chiu

Natasha Smith couldn’t sleep. The coronavirus pandemic was “this big, scary monster” turning her life upside down. Her work hours were cut. Her four children were home from school. Her husband, an essential worker, was constantly being called away from the safety of their home in Fredericksburg, Va. “I just started to get major panic and anxiety over everything,” said Smith, 45, who has long blamed her “very loud mind” for disrupting her sleep. With the pandemic’s added stressors, her thoughts only became louder, and her go-to combination of a prescription medication to help her sleep and mindfulness practices wasn’t working anymore. But then, Smith said, she found a solution: listening to an audiobook on headphones. “At first, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s just a way for me to have my alone time,’ but it just started to become a crutch,” Smith said. Now, “I am unable to lay down and go to bed without some noise.” Smith is one of many people who say listening to books or podcasts, rather than music, helps them fall asleep and get better rest. Listening to someone’s voice narrating an audiobook or talking on a podcast can be an effective sleep aid, experts say. “Some people, when they’re alone in bed at night, they’re kind of alone with their thoughts, and they have circulating thoughts a lot. ... They’re thinking about this or that,” said Rafael Pelayo, a clinical professor at Stanford University’s School of Medicine in the sleep medicine division. “They’ll listen to a podcast, or listen to music or something, or turn the TV on to block out their thoughts.” The podcast market has adapted to capitalize on this effect, and sleep—or relaxation—focused programs have steadily racked up millions of downloads. Last year, Drew Ackerman’s popular narrative sleep podcast, “Sleep With Me,”

had more than 42 million downloads, Ackerman wrote in an email to The Washington Post. Likewise, “Nothing Much Happens,” another popular bedtime-story podcast for adults, had almost 19 million total downloads in the past year, marking a 52 percent increase in growth over the previous year, according to analytics data from the Curiouscast podcast network/Corus Entertainment, home of the show. And “Get Sleepy,” which launched in November 2019, has since amassed more than 23 million downloads, creator Michael Brandon wrote in an email. If sounds are familiar, there’s less of a chance they will disturb your sleep, said Pelayo, author of “How to Sleep: The New Science-Based Solutions for Sleeping Through the Night.” “Your brain will learn to ignore the sound, or even better, to equate the sound with safety,” which may

help enhance sleep, he said. One of the keys to falling asleep is to bore your brain, said Steven Holfinger, a sleep medicine specialist at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. “Anything that’s going to potentially be interesting to your brain could be something that wakes it up,” he said. “The more boring the environment is when you’re asleep, the more likely you are to stay asleep.” But because not all partners or roommates prefer the same—or any—sleep-inducing sounds, some insomniacs have started wearing headphones to bed, which raises questions about safety, comfort and sleep quality. Although the effect of sleeping in headphones has not been well-studied, said Phyllis Zee, chief of sleep medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, she and other experts

believe it is generally safe. Here are their recommendations for addressing your relaxation needs while protecting your hearing and your quality of sleep. “Although the headphones may seem like they’re all targeting everybody the same, people falling asleep really have different issues, usually, that they’re trying to address,” Holfinger said. For people such as Smith, whose anxiety or racing minds make falling asleep difficult, for example, Holfinger said the focus should be on the content of what they’re listening to. But if the priority is drowning out traffic sounds or noisy neighbors, certain headphone features “could make a big difference,” he said. Headphones marketed for sleep come in a variety of styles, and they can range in price from less than CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

Spring 2021 ▪ Sip & Savor

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$20 to more than $200. Some companies also are promoting models that have more advanced technological features designed to change or shut off sound when they sense you’re in different stages of sleep, said Zee, who served as a consultant for Philips, which sells a high-tech sleep headband. But in the absence of large-scale studies assessing different styles and technology, Zee and other experts say, users should prioritize comfort. “Provided that the intensity levels (of sound) are similar, there probably isn’t a clear ‘safest’ choice for headphones,” Ashley King, an audiologist at George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates, wrote in an email. “The best style is probably the one that is most comfortable for you.” Luis Buenaver, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at Johns Hopkins, said he generally doesn’t suggest people fall asleep with headphones on. “Having something like physically in your ear or wrapped around your forehead can be disruptive,” he said. “Then you also have the other concern of this noise being kind of pumped into your ear all night.” If people really need headphones to cope with sleep problems, he suggested avoiding bulkier headphones. “If it’s very prominent or if it protrudes, then the likelihood of it disrupting the continuity of your sleep goes up,” he said. Wired headphones may pose safety risks if the cords get tangled during sleep. Experts noted that ear buds might not be suitable for those with sensitive ear canals, and some styles can fall out during sleep. Soft headband styles with built-in headphones that sit outside the ear may be less intrusive and more likely to stay in place, Buenaver said. Abby Ntalamu, 24, of Washington, D.C., regularly uses headphones for sleep, and she said she prefers the headband style over her Apple AirPods. “It’s a lot easier to sleep in,” said Ntalamu of her Bluetooth-enabled headband. “With the AirPods, they can fall out of my ears and then get lost in the bed, and then I have to search for them.” Ntalamu said she often drifts off listening to ASMR videos, typically a combination of whispering and quiet sounds, such as gentle tapping or flipping pages, which can also

induce sleep. A 2017 paper reported that pink noise, a repetitive whooshing-like sound, increased deep sleep and improved memory in older adults when it was delivered in bursts aligned with the brain waves of the study’s subjects as they were sleeping. Music therapy has also been shown to have an effect on relaxation and sleep, Zee said. Another emerging area of interest in sleep sounds is the use of binaural beats, which involves playing a slightly different sound frequency into each ear through headphones to create the perception of a single new tone, Buenaver said. Although existing research on binaural beats and sleep have not produced conclusive evidence of benefits over other types of sounds, Buenaver said, some studies have found that they may help with anxiety reduction and could be an option to try if you’re a headphone user. Regardless of what you decide to listen to, experts suggest keeping the volume low, which is probably more conducive to sleep and will help prevent hearing damage. “Listening at half the available volume is typically safe for most headphones,” King, the audiologist, wrote in an email. “Listening at a higher volume for an extended period of time can damage hair cells in the cochlea. These hair cells typically respond to different frequencies and can become less sensitive if damaged with prolonged exposure to high levels of sound.” Additionally, loud sounds coming through headphones might mask outside noises that “you need to be vigilant to,” Pelayo said, such as a smoke alarm or a child who needs help. Although there probably isn’t any harm in using headphones to help with sleep, Michelle Drerup, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the Cleveland Clinic’s Sleep Disorders Center, noted that it may only be part of the solution for people with chronic sleep issues. “For most people, if they have sleep difficulties, this isn’t going to be the answer by itself,” Drerup said. “If someone has chronic insomnia, they’re really going to probably need to address multiple factors. Doing things to develop better sleep habits, build sleep drive and really addressing the insomnia with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.” ■

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Cannoli kits and prime aged steaks: Here’s how the pandemic has revolutionized vending machines

by Laura Reiley

The pandemic has rocketed vending machines into new territory. Light-years beyond dispensers of Funyuns and Snickers, vending machines, robotic kiosks and other grab-and-go technology now broadly called “unattended retail” are putting artisanal pizza, hot bowls of ramen and prime cuts of beef into the hands of consumers 24/7.

Carla Balakgie, chief executive of the National Automatic Merchandising Association, the trade group representing the vending machine industry, said coronavirus pandemic fears and social distancing have accelerated vending machine adoption. “It’s touchless, it’s considered safe and it’s prepackaged so products haven’t been fondled and breathed on,” she said. “And technology has made it even safer: Some machines have a hover feature so you don’t have to

touch the buttons and you can use an app on your phone or use mobile ordering.” She said adoption in the past year has been swiftest by first responders needing sustenance on the go, but what might have previously been novelty “stunt” vending machines at trade shows are becoming normalized as regular avenues of commerce: bread-baking machines, customize-your-yogurt machines, even machines that dispense slippers, mascara and sundries at airports.

She said that, just a few years ago, the technology to take something frozen and cook it on the spot was nascent. New technology that monitors stock with sensors and cameras has been instrumental in expediting reordering. “What a consumer buys is driving what gets merchandised,” she said. Deglin Kenealy, chief executive of gourmet pizza vending machine start-up Basil Street has CONTINUED ON PAGE 13

Spring 2021 ▪ Sip & Savor

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seen both additional challenges and successes due to the pandemic. Raising $10 million in an initial round of funding, the business started with a pilot program of five machines early in 2020 with a focus on university dorms and airports. After those two markets saw massive contraction because of the pandemic, the company pivoted to what Kenealy called “closed environments” like

...for years the vending machine world was fairly static, but new technology, coupled with changing consumer desires, has supercharged innovation in the industry. manufacturing plants or military sites. He said Basil Street will have 50 units by midsummer and 200 by end of year, mostly in Texas and California. He called his units “automated pizza kitchens” and said that they represent an evolution in consumer thinking. “People are spending more time thinking about how their food came to the table. Consumers are demanding—they want fast, convenient and high-quality, and covid has accelerated that,” he said. Basil Street is completely touchless, he said, “the only person who will touch their pizza is the customer when they take it out.” Customers are given three choices for pizza on the touch screen, and swipe a credit card to pay. Pizzas take about three minutes to cook from frozen, exiting the machine in a box. A 10-inch pizza costs about $8.50. According to Kenealy, this concept is ideal for college dorms, taking less time

than traditional delivery and obviating the need for a stranger to show up at students’ rooms. Antonio Matarazzo, owner of Stellina Pizzeria in Arlington, Va., watched the news as the pandemic took hold in his native Italy and knew he had to do something to prepare. “In Europe, you can buy everything in a vending machine,” he said. He ordered a refrigerated pasta-and-sauce vending machine last April, but it did not arrive until February. Customers come for $25 pasta kits that feed three or four—Bolognese and cacio e pepe sauce have been top sellers so far. There are also cannoli-making kits and jars of tiramisu. “Our landlord has an office building downtown and we’re going to put a second machine there for when people go back to the office,” he said. Of the first machine, he says, “people are super excited about it. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the stocking of it.” Innovative vending concepts that existed before the pandemic have seen dramatic changes in sales. Dan Mesches, chief executive of Sprinkles Cupcakes, a chain of upscale sweets shops, says their “cupcake ATMs” have seen a 100 percent increase in sales since last March. They have two types: those that are attached to brick-and-mortar shops and others that are free-standing in airports and retail centers. They aim to launch 10 more of the latter around the country, Mesches said, “we see great growth as airport business comes back.” Luke Saunders, founder of Farmer’s Fridge, a chain of Chicago-area refrigerated kiosks that sells healthy bowls and salads in jars among other items, says he’s doubled the number of kiosks the business has in airports. “So many airport restaurants have been closed that it created an opportunity for us. People have shifted their mindset to being more comfortable using an app and doing digital order-

ing,” he said. Farmer’s Fridge locations in office buildings generally suffered as employees worked from home, but he says some employers have used the vending machines as a subsidized perk for workers. Joshua Applestone, whose meat company, Fleisher’s, in New York was at the vanguard of artisanal butchery about a decade ago, began selling locally sourced and sustainably raised meats vacuum-packed and dispensed by vending machines in 2015. Applestone Meat Company now has three locations. “Covid helped, I’m not going to lie. We don’t live in a 9-to5 world anymore, people have different schedules,” he said. And while he declines to share sales figures, he said, “We’re doing more in sales than I have in other businesses, and we’ve surpassed the numbers that we needed to be at.” He says that for years the vending machine world was fairly

static, but new technology, coupled with changing consumer desires, has supercharged innovation in the industry. He says his next generation of custom-made machines will be ready in six months. He hopes to add the ability to describe products to customers and “upsell” related products,with app-enabled live inventory so consumers can see, from home, precisely how many flank steaks or rib-eyes are still available from the machines. “It’s fascinating to me that covid has driven this. Of course we’re going back to ‘normal’ post-pandemic, but these things will stay because they make a lot of sense. If you sell a great product, you can expand it now with 24-hour sales,” Applestone said. He says he sees utility for restaurants to expand their operating hours and minimize waste, and for industries like CBD or pharmaceuticals to enhance the convenience of their services. ■

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The ideal temperature for your wine is probably not what you think by Dave McIntyre

Special to The Washington Post

Let’s talk temperature. Not the Arctic death grip choking the country the past week or so, but the temperature of the wine in our glass. Most of us are doing it all wrong. The standard advice is to serve white wines chilled and reds at room temperature. But this custom developed before every house had a refrigerator at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or central heating set at 72. So we tend to drink our whites too cold and our reds too warm. Temperature is important because it affects a wine’s aroma, and aroma is the most important component of flavor. Try this simple experiment: The next time you pull a bottle of white wine from your refrigerator—assuming it has been in there for several hours or days, good and cold— pour yourself a glass and give it a sniff and a taste. It will smell and taste cold. Just cold. You may notice the alcohol. As the wine warms up, say in 30 minutes to an hour, you should detect fruity aromas and flavors. Even two

Sip & Savor ▪ Spring 2021

hours after removal from the fridge, the bottle may be near room temperature but should feel cool to the touch and the wine cool on your palate. By then, it will be giving you everything it has to give. No need for ice buckets. Now open a bottle of room-temperature red and pour yourself a glass. Taste it, then put the bottle in the refrigerator for 30 minutes while you cook dinner. Pour yourself a second glass of the refrigerated red and compare it with the first. The slightly chilled wine should be livelier than the warmer glass, which may taste dull and, if a heavier wine, alcoholic. As always, the weight of the wine makes a difference. Lighter wines benefit from being colder (though not days-in-the-refrigerator cold), while heavier wines should be just cooler than room temperature. So rosé, riesling, gruner veltliner, sauvignon blanc and other lighter white wines achieve their refreshing apogee when cold, while weightier whites such as chardonnay, pinot gris and the Rhone varieties such as viognier, roussanne and marsanne show better when cool. This advice holds for sparkling wines as well: Cold emphasizes their crisp, refreshing nature, and as they warm up, fruit and other flavors become more pronounced. With reds, the lighter gamay (beaujolais), pinot noir and various lesser-known grapes such as trousseau, trendy in certain circles because they have never been commercially popular, all benefit from a good chill, but not refrigerator temperature. Many natural wines tend to be lighter in weight, and benefit from a chill. Bigger reds: Your cabernet sauvignon or chateauneuf-du-pape are best slightly cool. Lowering their temperature by a bit moderates the alcohol and releases the aromas. You can, of course, adjust the

temperature of your wine to suit your preference. Just remember: Cool, not cold. So how should you keep your wine at the right temp? If you have a temperature-controlled cellar or a wine fridge that maintains a constant 58 degrees Fahrenheit (some fridges have separate temperature zones a little warmer for white wines), just take your bottle out 30 minutes or so before dinner to let it acclimate. White or red, doesn’t matter. If, like me, you live the perpetual dance of adjusting the thermostat to that fine line of just cool enough for wine and warm enough for humans, you won’t need to do much. If you can think ahead, put your white wine in the fridge a few hours before dinner. Pour yourself a glass when you start to prepare dinner, and at that time put your red wine in the door of the fridge to chill. If you only open one bottle, you get the idea. For a dinner party (remember those?) an ice bucket is ideal for chilling several bottles. But not just ice - ice and cold water maximize the temperature exchange and cool the wine faster. My secret weapon is a gel-pack sleeve marketed by Rapid Ice. I keep three of these in my freezer and slip one around a bottle to give it a quick chill; 20 minutes or so and the wine is ready to go. You could get by with just one of these freezer sleeves, but most wine geeks would probably feel existential dread if they had fewer than two. Experiment! If your wine is too cold, it will warm up. If it’s too warm, stick it in the fridge or wrap it in a frozen gel sleeve for 20 or 30 minutes. You’ll discover the temperatures that give you the best experience with your wines. They just may not be the temperatures you expect. ■

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5 travel shows that ease the pain of still being stuck at home by Natalie B. Compton

With a vaccine rollout underway, it’s finally feeling like the days of being stuck at home could be drawing to a close. People are dreaming of (and booking) summer travel; airlines are adding exciting new routes instead of having to cut them. But before we had hope, we had travel television shows that kept us fantasizing about all the places we couldn’t go. For some people, travel shows are a way to adventurously explore or culturally immerse ourselves without leaving the house. For others, they’re a planning resource for future trips. The travel TV that debuted during the pandemic enabled us to do all of that and more. Here are five fan favorites, and what they meant to homebound travelers. “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.“ Stanley Tucci. Where do we even begin. Former model, Oscarnominated and Emmy Awardwinning actor, viral cocktailian. America’s favorite supporting actor finally has his time to shine in his CNN series, “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.” In this role, Tucci gets to bon vivant his way around Italy, sampling prosciutto di Parma in Emilia Romagna, eating his favorite pasta on the Amalfi Coast and drinking from the country’s centuries-old wine windows. From her home in Washington D.C., Savannah Wormley has been watching Tucci’s show since its premiere in February. It fit in with the other travel and food shows she has been drawn to this year, like “Chef’s Table” and “Foodie Love.” So far, Wormley has loved the show’s cinematography, and she didn’t expect Tucci to be such

Sip & Savor ▪ Spring 2021

a suave travel TV natural. “I think it’s such a great escape from everything that’s going on right now,” Wormley says. “I especially love the food shots, and I think it’s great to watch Stanley interact with Italians and learn about the food they eat. You can tell it brings him so much joy.” “Men in Kilts.” For a spotlight on Scottish culture and landscapes, there’s “Men in Kilts” on Starz. The show follows “Outlander” actors Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish as they dive into the food, drinks and traditions of their native land. It’s a love letter to Scotland told through banter-filled road trips. For Angel Lunsford in Salem, AL, “Men in Kilts” has felt both helpful and hilarious. Since before the pandemic, Lunsford and a

experiences to try. They have also found new restaurants and types of food they’ll seek out on their trip. “It shows you a lot of places you might want to go that weren’t on your list,” Lunsford says. “We wouldn’t have known about them had we not seen the show.”

friend have been planning a trip to Scotland for 2022. They’ve both been watching “Men in Kilts,” as a way to discover more points of interest to see and cultural

“Taste the Nation.” On Hulu, “Taste the Nation” follows awardwinning cookbook author and longtime “Top Chef” host Padma Lakshmi as she travels around the United States telling the country’s food stories. The show, which stops in places like El Paso, Milwaukee,

Las Vegas and Honolulu, is a celebration of the immigrant communities that shape American culture. Andrea Alexander started watching the show in May 2020 at a time when travel seemed far, far away. She loved learning about food and the people who make it, as well as the show’s focus on their struggle with marginalization. While staying at home with her family, Alexander says, Lakshmi’s show helped her travel vicariously in a way other television shows couldn’t. “I couldn’t go to restaurants. I couldn’t, like, see the world on a plane, so it helped in that regard,” says Alexander, who lives in Rochester, NY. “Down to Earth with Zac Efron.” People familiar with Zac Efron may know him as Troy Bolton from the “High School Musical” trilogy. But with his Netflix show, “Down to Earth with Zac Efron,” the actor has reintroduced himself

as a champion for the natural world. Efron travels to places such as Costa Rica, Sardinia and the Amazon rainforest to bring awareness to environmental issues, and he dives into unique experiences - like ayahuasca tourism - along the way.

“Their traveling was really hardcore,” she says. “But sometimes those are the kinds of shows I like to watch, where they do what I don’t necessarily want to do, but at least I feel like I had that experience.”

For some people, travel shows are a way to adventurously explore or culturally immerse ourselves without leaving the house. For others, they’re a planning resource for future trips. The travel TV that debuted during the pandemic enabled us to do all of that and more. At home in Santa Barbara, CA, where she raises her young family and a brood of chickens in the backyard, Katherine Guzman Sanders and her husband got into Efron’s show after watching the trailer by mistake.

“Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi.” PBS debuted a two-part special of “Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi” in February highlighting Carnival in a year without Carnival. Host Mickela Mallozzi traveled to the

French Caribbean to showcase the holiday in the Guadeloupe islands, exploring the music, dance and Guadeloupean Black identity. Jason Watson, a self-proclaimed “PBS geek” in New Hyde Park on Long Island, was already a fan of the station’s food and travel shows, such as Eating In with Lidia. When “Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi” came on, he loved the show’s travel, music and dance concept, which reminded him of Anthony Bourdain’s work. “I think it’s important for people to be able to have that when you can’t go anywhere; you can become so within yourself,” he says. “I think it’s good for people to see that gradually things will come back, and people will be able to travel and explore the world and see other people and learn about other people.” Carnival fans can find the episodes on local PBS stations, Create TV, PBS.org and the PBS app, as well as the show’s older seasons on Amazon Prime Video. ■

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Spring 2021 ▪ Sip & Savor

Each coffee brewing method has pros and cons. We tried 5 to help you find

your perfect cup

by Tim Carman

Mia Farrow just wanted a good cup of coffee. So like anyone in search of answers, the actor took to Twitter to crowdsource ideas on how to brew the best cup. She got a lot of answers. More than 8,000 responses by Friday, some more serious and helpful than others. As with most subjects, Twitter is not the ideal platform to discuss coffee brewing. A complex topic is

Sip & Savor ▪ Spring 2021

naturally reduced to easy answers —your preferred method is deemed perfect, no further discussion needed!—without understanding that many factors play into your favorite cup, starting with your palate. What I prefer in coffee may not be what you like. What’s true all down the line, however, is that you must start with fresh coffee. Unless of course you enjoy the wet cardboard flavors of beans that have sat on a shelf for months, and if you do,

you can probably stop reading here and move straight to the comments, where you can explain that a can of Folgers and a percolator are all you need to start your morning. (To be honest, that’s where I started with coffee, too, so I know where you are.) To help Farrow—and, by extension, many of us—I spent one morning testing five brewing devices, all using the same coffee: a natural Guatemalan from Vigilante Coffee, an excellent roaster

based in Maryland. You could argue that a natural coffee—in which beans are processed with the coffee cherries still intact, absorbing some of the sugars and fruit flavors—isn’t ideal for such a test as mine, but it was the freshest coffee I had in the house. It was just a week off the roast. Aside from showing the pros and cons of each brewing method, I wanted to offer a glimpse at how each leads to different flavors in the CONTINUED ON PAGE 20

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cup. This will always be the case, no matter what beans you have on hand. Brewing devices may work well with some beans, but less so with others. Rarely is one ideally suited for all. The goal is to find the device that works best for you most of the time. For each device, except for the pour-over, I relied on a recipe and method that is publicly available, so that you can refer to it at home (though I’ll confess that one recipe wasn’t worth a hill of beans). AeroPress Pros: Small and portable, which is why many of us took it on the road, back when there was a road to travel. Speedy, too: You can have caffeine in your system in just a couple of minutes, which is important on busy mornings. Cons: Produces only espresso (usually without crema unless you follow specific techniques) or a small cup of coffee. Because of its quick, pressurized process, you typically don’t extract the full range of flavors. Method: The classic recipe on AeroPress’s site, plus about five ounces of water for an Americano. Taste: A rather thin cup. The tropical fruit flavors of the Guatemalan natural were reduced to background notes, though there was a lovely hint of dark chocolate bitterness. Cleanup: A breeze. Just knock the used filter and grounds in the trash or compost and rinse the three small pieces of equipment. Stagg X pour-over dripper Pros: Double-walled and insulated, so it can better maintain a constant temperature throughout brewing. Its compact chamber keeps the grounds tightly packed, giving

you more control over brew time and extraction. Cons: Produces only one cup, which will frequently be too hot to drink at first, a problem for those looking for a quick fix. You need custom paper filters. Method: Basic 16:1 ratio of water to freshly ground coffee, using 204-degree water. (Note: The water temperature will drop as soon as it hits the room-temperature grounds.)

Taste: Bright and full-bodied, although it took several minutes for the coffee to cool to the point where I could appreciate its flavors. Tart pineapple, ripe mango, a light cinnamon sweetness in the background. The tart fruit lingered on the palate like rock candy. Cleanup: Simple. Dump the filter and wet grounds straight into the trash or compost. Only one small piece of equipment to clean.

S AV E U P TO 5 0 %

Chemex Pros: The custom bonded filters. They produce a sweet and balanced cup with less bitterness and fewer oils than with other pour-over devices. You can brew a few cups at once. The brewer, designed 80 years ago by chemist Peter Schlumbohm, is a thing of beauty. Cons: The custom bonded filters. They’re not cheap, and they can mute the more complex flavors found in single-origin beans. The glass brewer is fragile. I’ve broken one and live in fear of the next disaster. Method: The recipe from Elemental Coffee, which uses a center-pour technique. Taste: Fruit forward, surprisingly bright. Bitter elements were AWOL, with an almost metallic flavor as the cup cooled. Cleanup: Easy to dump the filter and grounds, but cleaning the hourglass-shaped brewer can be a pain, requiring a long-handled brush. Clever dripper Pros: This cross between a French press and a pour-over dripper requires no water-pouring skills and little oversight. Gives you pinpoint control over brew time and has a convenient stopper that allows coffee to drip straight into your favorite mug. Cons: Unless the beans are ground fairly coarsely, the coffee can be overextracted. The plastic tends to stain after repeated usage. It’s easy to forget about, leading to grounds that steep too long. Method: The recipe from Prima Coffee. Taste: A cup with more floral aromas than the other devices. The fruit and acidity started to pop as

the coffee cooled, though I noted a strange astringent aftertaste, like wine with a lot of tannins. Cleanup: Nothing to it. Dump the filter and grounds in the trash or compost, and rinse the device. Note: It is not dishwasher safe. French press Pros: Requires no filters, no water-pouring skills and little oversight. Gives you precise control over brew time. With no filter, oils remain, often making for a full-bodied and flavorful cup. Cons: Grounds can seep in. The French press wastes a lot of water warming up the glass carafe before steeping. Depending on the size of your press, you may need more than one kettle’s worth of water. As with the Clever, it’s easy to forget about, leading to overextraction. Method: I trusted Stumptown Coffee’s recipe for a French press, which turned out to be a mistake. The ratio of coffee to water looked off from the start. When I punched the numbers into my calculator, it turned out to be 18 parts water to 1 part coffee. I decided to prepare it a second time with a similar, two-part pouring technique, but with a 13:1 ratio. Taste: The Stumptown recipe led to a thin and tealike cup. There was some nice, light acidity to the coffee, but I found it underwhelming. The second recipe produced a far better cup: acidic, fruity, sweet, superb on almost every count. Cleanup: There’s no way around it: It’s messy. Used grounds collect at the bottom of the carafe, and it can be a pain to sweep those cleanly into the trash or compost. The problem is such that people have developed “hacks” to better clean it. ■

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Spring 2021 ▪ Sip & Savor

The latest hotel amenity doesn’t involve massages or cookies:

early month hotels were compliment sanitizer. A s is now upon January ann travelers ent must provid “viral test.” include anti acid amplifi according to Control and “You hav absolutely c they stay wi Cole, a senio Phocuswrigh lodging and hotels need they have a That they h The mos the coronav from Januar CORONAVI New Luxury relations firm feature at ho and Los Ang negative tes for domestic guests migh after sitting packed beac The parti of test, locat properties h antigen test the hotel’s p polymerase tests conduc clinic or hos assistance fr few provide Internationa compliment 10 of its hot Dominican promotion f couple frolic includes a fr antigen test help guests an addition Beaches reso open and what’s closed, are people have two te wearing masks, and how many both free: th days will they need to quarantine,” visitors and she said. “People want to feel safe, Montage In but they also want everything to Montage an be open and feel like they’re on resorts, has vacation.” amenity eve The idea of a covid specialist is with One M still a novelty in the hospitality properties c industry, but over the year, hotels 30-day mem have been introducing new get a corona amenities that speak to these that rash on anxiety-riddled times. In the

It’s a free coronavirus test.

by Andrea Sachs

As a senior manager of member services at Exclusive Resorts, Lambie Swenson assists vacation club members with choosing a destination and accommodations based on their interests and travel style. Since the coronavirus outbreak, her field of expertise has expanded, earning her a new title: covid navigator.

Sip & Savor ▪ Spring 2021

“It’s an extra hat I wear,” Swenson said from her Oregon home, “but wouldn’t it be fantastic if I didn’t have to wear this hat later in the year?” Since the onset of the global health crisis, Swenson has been spending about 20 hours a week handling members’ queries and concerns about the pandemic and their travel plans. She addresses many issues in “Know Before You Go,” a dossier shared on the

members-only site. The overview for Peninsula Papagayo in Costa Rica, for instance, includes guidance on coronavirus test sites, mandatory health insurance and capacity limits at national parks. She pulls the information from official government sources and laces it with anecdotes from staff on the ground plus feedback from members who have firsthand knowledge of the destination. “Members want to know what’s

early months of the pandemic, hotels were loading up guests with complimentary masks and hand sanitizer. A second wave of perks is now upon us, triggered by a January announcement that all air travelers entering the United States must provide proof of a negative “viral test.” (Acceptable tests include antigen tests and nucleic acid amplification tests, or NAAT, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) “You have to make people feel absolutely comfortable when they stay with you,” said Robert Cole, a senior research analyst at Phocuswright who specializes in lodging and leisure travel. “The hotels need to communicate that they have a way to protect you. That they have your back.” The most popular perk of 2021 is the coronavirus test. A news release from January declared, “On-site CORONAVIRUS TESTS Are Hotels’ New Luxury Amenity.” A public relations firm was pitching the feature at hotels in Miami Beach and Los Angeles, even though a negative test result is not required for domestic travel. However, some guests might find a test reassuring after sitting on a crowded plane or packed beach for several hours. The particulars—cost, type of test, location—vary. Some properties have arranged free antigen tests administered on the hotel’s premises; others offer polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests conducted for a fee at a local clinic or hospital, with logistical assistance from the front desk. A few provide both. Meliá Hotels International, for instance, set up complimentary antigen testing at 10 of its hotels in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. A current promotion featuring a barefaced couple frolicking on the beach includes a free fourth night and an antigen test. Meliá’s staff can also help guests schedule a PCR test for an additional cost. Sandals and Beaches resorts in the Caribbean are people have two tests available to guests, many both free: the antigen for American uarantine,” visitors and PCR for Canadians. o feel safe, Montage International, which runs thing to Montage and Pendry hotels and y’re on resorts, has pushed the health care amenity even further by partnering ecialist is with One Medical. Guests at its U.S. pitality properties can sign up for a free ar, hotels 30-day membership. Now, you can ew get a coronavirus test and ask about hese that rash on your arm. the

At Baha Mar in the Bahamas, Americans must undergo a trifecta of tests during their stay: one at arrival, a second on the fifth day (as mandated by the government) and a third before flying home (per U.S. law). Since December, when the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar reopened, the company has administered more than 42,000 free tests. The number will probably skyrocket: On March 4, SLS Baha Mar and Rosewood Baha Mar welcomed back visitors. To safeguard tourists and

sticking a cotton tip up your nose. The hotels are collaborating with medical facilities, such as hospitals and labs. But Robert Bollinger, a professor of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine, said guests should make sure the health care workers are following safety standards and practices. (Bollinger does not advocate nonessential travel.) The test, for one, should come from an approved kit, and the professionals should be wearing personal

“People want to feel safe, but they also want everything to be open and feel like they’re on vacation.” “The hotels need to communicate that they have a way to protect you. residents, Jamaica established Resilient Corridors, zones that contain about 80% of the island’s tourism businesses. More than 40 hotels residing in these areas—from Negril to Port Antonio in the north and the Milk River in Clarendon to Negril in the south—have onsite testing. The government also installed 15 testing operations in the corridors, for guests whose hotels do not offer the service. “We had to step up our testing infrastructure,” said Edmund Bartlett, the country’s minister of tourism. “We have not had any situation yet where Americans were stranded because they couldn’t get a test.” Scheduling a test can be as easy as booking a spa treatment or in-room massage. At the W South Beach Hotel in Miami, guests reserve an appointment through the concierge desk or by scanning a QR code in their room. The test site, which is run by Sollis Health, resides in a former beauty salon adjoining the hotel. At Dorado Beach, a Ritz Carlton Reserve, in Puerto Rico, a doctor will make a house call - or, rather, a guest-room call - for $400. Blue Desert Cabo in Mexico has a similar arrangement: A test-kitcarrying medical professional will drop by your villa for a nominal fee. “It’s that simple,” said Sean McClenahan, president of Blue Desert Cabo. In addition, the property’s staff will schedule the appointment so that it falls within the 72-hour window required by the U.S. government. Rest assured, the bellman is not

protective equipment (PPE). He warned that if the steps are not conducted correctly, the patient could receive an incorrect result and inadvertently expose other travelers to the virus. “The biggest challenge is when the person performing the test does not collect the specimen properly and you get a false negative,” he

said. Bollinger suggests taking a second test if you are concerned. He added that a negative result does not mean you have a pass to roam. “If you have symptoms or have had a recent covid-19 exposure,” he said, “don’t get on the plane, even if you test negative.” Several hospitality players have introduced free insurance policies —or promises—that handle the worst-case scenario: a guest testing positive. Travel Safe with Melia and Sandals’ Travel Protection Insurance, for example, cover the patient’s medical costs and up to two weeks of lodging. Karisma Hotels Resorts properties in Mexico’s Riviera Maya, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica will also accommodate a quarantining guest free for up to two weeks. Baha Mar’s Travel with Confidence initiative includes a $150 daily food and beverage credit with its courtesy convalescence suite. If the traveler would rather return to the States than recover in the Bahamas, the company will fly the guest and up to four family members sharing the same room to South Florida at no cost. A sign of the times: The aircraft is not a swanky charter plane but an air ambulance. ■

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With online courses, oenophiles can satisfy a thirst for wine and the world by Paul Abercrombie

Special to The Washington Post

It’s a familiar scene for many of us these days. I’m sitting on my front porch one Sunday evening, laptop perched on my knees, glass of wine in hand, on a group Zoom call. Most other participants also are drinking. But your typical virtual happy hour this isn’t. It’s my first day of wine school. Like many folks who love wine and travel, I look for ways to combine the two. But doing so isn’t just an excuse to party away from home; it’s a great way to learn a lot about each place’s wines. I can’t visit vineyards during the pandemic, so in the fall I enrolled in a nine-week online course taught by the Napa Valley Wine Academy. I’m taking the advanced level-three certification course developed by the United Kingdom-based Wine Spirit Education Trust, which is among the world’s top wine education and accreditation organizations. (I took and passed the level-two course a couple of years ago—in an actual classroom setting.) My wife, Gail, also a fan of wine and travel, encouraged me. As she put it: “Oh, goody. Now you’ll be even more insufferable about wine.” Just as with most first days

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of school, this one’s mostly a chance to introduce ourselves and for the teacher to tell us what to expect. Of my 50-odd classmates, I’m among a handful who aren’t in the business of making, selling or serving wine. We amateurs are here solely to learn more about a beloved beverage.

Jess Helfand, our charming and patient Nashville-based instructor, lays out what’s in store for us. Come exam time, we’ll be expected to explain what natural and human factors are involved with most every aspect of growing grapes and turning them into wine in the world’s major wine-producing regions through-

out more than a dozen countries. Oh, and we’ll also need to describe how to properly store and serve wines, pair them with food and display more than a passing knowledge of wine laws. The 2½-hour trial will wrap up with blind-tasting a couple of wines. Because the course is aimed at those who are engaged in

the wine trade—or want to be— there’s a focus on scoring a passing grade. Barely more than half of those who take this test pass the first time, Jess says. Undaunted, I take a big sip of wine, grateful that I’ve scheduled my test for late July. I picked the date because I figured I’d need more time to study—and because the exam will take place at the Epicurean Hotel, about four blocks from my house. Plenty of time to prepare. In a webinar several days later, Jess goes over what, judging from the smiles on my classmates’ faces, clearly will be a favorite part of the course: Learning how to taste and evaluate wine. For this, we’ll need to adhere to the program’s trademarked systematic approach to tasting wine, spelled out on a handy double-sided and laminated card. If, for example, we taste a hint of lime in a wine, we’ll need to specify whether it’s juice or zest. Ditto for sticking to the official lexicon when judging a wine’s appearance, and levels of sweetness, acidity and tannins, among other characteristics. In other words, although a wine may smell or taste of golden raisins, we’re to use the British synonym sultana. “This is in no way a creative writing assignment,” Jess says with a laugh. To help us get the hang of things, she walks us through a group tasting of two wines—2018 Maison L’Envoye Fleurie and 2016 Chateau Laribotte Sauternes —hotel minibar-sized bottles of which are conveniently included with our course materials. Inspired and pleasantly buzzed, I fall asleep that night wondering if Jess’s advice to “make this level-three tasting card your friend” means my family will be okay with me bringing it to the dinner table. Over the next couple of weeks, online instructional videos and homework assignments involving reading and writing take me deep into the how, where and why of winemaking. Reading over my marked-up textbook pages, I vow never again to tease anyone for alleged overuse of highlighter pens. By Week 3, we’ve landed in France. First stop is the famed Bordeaux region, where we ex-

plore how weather, climate and soils conspire with a handful of grapes to create the signature wines along the left and right banks of the Gironde estuary and two rivers. We also discover how autumn morning mists and sunny afternoons farther to the south encourage the curiously beneficent fungus that helps turn semillon, sauvignon blanc and muscadelle grapes into honeyed Sauternes. As always, Jess offers lots of practical tips. For example, to determine how long a wine’s finish is, she says try counting “one Mississippi, two Mississippi”

ments returns from Jess with what looks like more corrective red ink than original black type. Reminding me to stick to official tasting terminology, Jess diplomatically noted it’s unlikely I’d earn any points in the exam for describing a wine as smelling of “raw hamburger.” As if reading my mind, she reassures me I’m doing fine. From lessons on Austria, Germany, Hungary and Greece, I come away with fresh appreciation for their wines. I also make a mental note to score a bottle of white wine made from assyrtiko grapes on Greece’s volcanic San-

I’m taking the advanced level-three certification course developed by the United Kingdom-based Wine Spirit Education Trust, which is among the world’s top wine education and accreditation organi ations. and so on after taking a taste. If pleasant flavors remain by “five Mississippi,” you know it’s a wine with a long finish. After a brief stopover in neighboring Dordogne, with its bold wines made from Malbec grapes, we bounce to Burgundy, a place I’ve long wanted to visit in person. So happy am I to sample the region’s famed pinot noirs and Chardonnays, and begin to understand its once maddeningly complex hierarchy of appellations, that I linger and fall behind on homework as the class heads south to Beaujolais before jumping north to Alsace, near the German border, followed by the Loire to the west. By the time we reach Rhone, I’ve mostly caught up. With the arrival of a cold snap in my hometown of Tampa, I pretend one evening that the bitterly cold mistral winds of the northern Rhone are blowing as I sip a deep and spicy syrah from Cote Rotie. We’ve read and tasted our way through southern France’s Languedoc, Roussillon and Provence, when the first of my tasting notes homework assign-

torini, an island where vines are trained into basket-like blobs on the ground as protection against strong winds. Come to think of it, I should also come up with some sort of mnemonic to remember Germany’s brain- and tongue-twisting lingo for the sweetness levels of its wines. Although I like to think I’m fairly familiar with Italian wines, I realize I’ve only scratched the surface of how the boot-shaped nation’s geology and geography contribute to their subtleties. It’s also now, about halfway through the course, that I heed Jess’s advice to print out maps of wine regions, labeling subregions and scribbling other important details. As our course makes its way through Spain, Portugal and the Americas, I worry anew that I may have taken on more than I can handle. Chapters on Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, whose climatic quirks and wines seem ever more foreign to my ears and taste buds, only amp up my anxieties. Then one day, I pop by a local wine shop for a couple of bottles of Bordeaux. Scanning wine

labels, I find myself thinking how a bottle from Saint-Emilion, being from the right bank and dominated by merlot grapes, is likely to have medium to high tannins, and red berry and plum fruit flavors. Similar experiences of near-competence happen in aisles devoted to wines of California and Canada. Encouraged, I dive into lessons on sparkling wines of the world, along with sherry, port and fortified muscats. My latest tasting notes assignment - on Champagne and sherry - comes back from Jess with what seems like less red ink. So ends the course: To celebrate its completion, I splurge on a bottle of Bonnet-Ponson “Cuvee Perpetuelle” Premier Cru Extra Brut Champagne. Not that I plan to take down the wine region maps festooning my office walls, or otherwise slack off studying for my exam this summer. As I semi-convincingly tell Gail, my newfound knowledge will come in handy when we are able to plan in-person visits to the wine regions upon which I hope soon to be a certified expert. ■

Napa Valley Wine Academy napavalleywineacademy.com 855-513-9738 California-based school offering online (and, when possible again, in-person) courses for newbie wine and spirits enthusiasts and experts alike. Classes start at $45 for folks interested in learning how to pair wines with foods, and $125 for Wine 101, for those keen to learn generally about wine. More advanced courses such as the Wine Spirit Education Trust’s globally recognized accreditation curriculums on wine, spirits and sake run anywhere from $325 for introductory classes to upward of five figures for the most advanced, multiyear programs. Spring 2021 ▪ Sip & Savor

Olive oil

is becoming one of the hottest ingredients in Asia

Twenty years ago, when chef Shinobu Namae cooked at the acclaimed Italian restaurant Acqua Pazza in Tokyo, he had trouble selling dishes made with olive oil, one of the cuisine’s featured ingredients. Customers frequently asked him to omit it from their order. Today, says Namae, “people in Tokyo love olive oil.” At his Michelin three-star L’Effervescence, the chef can now source locally made oil from Souju, a farm in the Kagawa prefecture that once grew Bonsai plants. Because the owners were expert at pruning, Namae says they can control the growth of the olive trees to sustainably “harvest good fruits constantly.” Japan’s increasing taste for olive oil has spurred local producers. The country won eight awards, including four gold ones, at the 2020 NYIOCC World Olive Oil Competition. A big winner, Green Basket Japan, has olive groves in Odawara, about an hour outside Tokyo. In 2019, Japan exported 276.23 metric tons of olive oil, a 209% increase from 2018 and a 545% increase from 2014. China is also committing to the olive oil business. In 2020, the extra-virgin, organic oil Xiangyu Coratina won double gold at the Athena International Olive Oil Competition out of 430 entrants. The company that produced it, Xiangyu Oil Olive Development Co., hired an Argentine agronomic engineer, Pablo Canamasas, to produce the winning oil. “Extra-virgin olive oil consumption in China is increasing at a significant pace,” said Canamasas via email. “Particularly in big cities and in a segment of the population aged 25-35 that has traveled abroad and is more exposed to the Mediterranean diet or has heard of it.” Xiangyu’s olives are grown in the Wudu District in China’s western Gansu province. The climate has enough similarities to the Mediterranean coast to produce quality olives, including slightly alkaline soil and plenty of sun, according to Xiaoyong Bai, chairman of Garden City Olive Technology Development Co. His Garden Taste oil won a gold medal for

Sip & Savor ▪ Spring 2021

quality at the 2018 International Olive Council’s Awards, where it was recognized for its “ripe fruitiness.” Bai has been growing olives for 23 years; his plantation now encompasses more than 3.7 million acres. A retired civil servant and committed environmentalist, Bai said that he’s helped plant trees “on many barren mountains” via a translator over email. He added: “At present, China consumes 6,000 tons of olive oil every year, with an annual growth rate of 18%.” In 2020, his company exported a batch of olive oil to South Korea, the first time he sold product outside China. The Asia-Pacific olive market is expected to record an annual growth rate of 4.2% from 2020 through 2025, according to market research firm Mordor Intelligence. Mordor sees the region’s market for olive oil growing rapidly to meet surging demand from consumers because of its health benefits. In Singapore, Sebastien Lepinoy is likewise pushing world-class oil, but he’s not using local olives. The chef at Michelin three-star restaurant Les Amis spent five months developing a blend to complement his modern French cooking for such dishes as Langoustine de Loctudy-giant shrimp with zucchini and an extra-virgin emulsion. “I needed an olive oil to match with my cuisine and also, for cheese,” Lepinoy says. He used five kinds of olives from Château d’Estoublon, in Provence, France, to create a blend that he imports, uses, and markets to customers. Lepinoy has enough confidence in the market for olive oil in Singapore that he’s selling bottles of his smooth, subtly peppery oil for $36 ($48 Singapore). He says there has been good demand for a more healthful fat as an alternative to his restaurant’s famed butter.

Although travel restrictions have kept away tourists who might buy souvenir bottles of oil, restrictions have also kept the city-state’s welloff residents home, and they’ve shown a lot of interest in the olive oil, Lepinoy says. Still, there is some resistance to

olive oil in Asia. “Crazy as it may sound,” says Canamasas, who helped produce Longnan Xiangyu’s award-winning oil, “the Chinese public have the same view we outsiders have on Chinese products: that they are of poor quality.” ■

Th wh

The power of a meal shared, while separated by Ben Mims

For many of us, one of the natural consequences of this past year of quarantine has been the need to cook less food. Once the shutdown took effect, all food media outlets promptly pivoted to providing recipes for one or two people. With families separated and dinner parties being a thing of the past, cooking large batches of food to share was now unnecessary, even dangerous. But as someone who has a pathological inability to cook small meals, it was the one part of our new world I couldn’t adapt to. Growing up in a Southern family, big meals were the norm. Every meal for my nuclear family of four provided enough food for eight. Each Sunday, when we drove to my grandmother’s rural home for post-church lunch, there was enough fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread and layer cakes on the banquet-style table to feed the congregation we’d just left. Serving a surplus of food was the way we showed love to one another, especially when vocalizing it was not our strong suit. Having more than enough was a generous act; having too little conveyed almost a moral failing. In my adult life before the pandemic, this tradition stayed with me. When having only another couple over for dinner, I’d make more food than the four of us could finish in three meals each. My partner always pleaded with me to make less, both to save money and because our tiny fridge could hold only so many leftovers. But doing so seemed antithetical to the type of gregarious hospitality I had been raised in. When the pandemic hit, though, my outlet for the excess food suddenly hit an impediment. In the shock of the transition, I cooked less for about a month but then quickly ricocheted back to my default of needing to cook for a party as an outlet for the stress. Many professional bakers and cooks in L.A. and across the U.S. also did this, scraping together small popups and new businesses to get their food to paying customers. It was in an effort not only to make money, of course, but to scratch the itch for

putting their love and creativity into a medium that feeds and nourishes those who needed it the most. But instead of cooking a lot and then simply eating the leftovers— something I can’t do and plan to speak with my therapist about one day—I devised a new solution that

But when so much is so bad all the time, it’s easy to forget how something as seemingly small as a gifted meal brought the greatest relief in past tough times. worked with my ethos of showing love through food: Bringing the extras as meals to my friends. Several of my friends lived alone, didn’t like cooking or had lost jobs because of the pan-

demic, so bringing them food helped not only me but also helped them in a practical, necessary way—it was both fuel and fellowship but without the religious associations. Instead of bringing my friends a sad plastic container of leftovers, though, I’d make “homemade takeout,” packing up the food in foil containers intended to be fully-cooked or warmed in the oven or microwave so the dishes were at their prime, not reconstituted versions that saw their best lives days prior. That big pork roast, three-tiered layer cake or pan of roasted squash quarters? They all found a home with my friends who would never have made that food for themselves. This aspect of giving food is not new, of course. During my own upbringing in Mississippi, large meals were often gifted to our friends and families in times of distress or need. If there was a death in a family or someone you knew had been in a car accident or had an extended stay in the hospital, you delivered large trays of food—lasagna, pot roast, macaroni and cheese and any number of onepan baked casseroles. These dishes

could be portioned, rewarmed and eaten for several meals, so the recipient was taken care of for days on end. Even good times can come with challenging circumstances. Moving into a home where the kitchen wasn’t operational was the prime opportunity to give a meal to friends so they didn’t need to rely on fast food for a week. And any family with a newborn can attest to the power that a lovingly-prepared meal brings to new moms or couples faced with sleepless nights and isolation that can feel like a prison. It’s just one less thing to worry about. That small act can bring exponentially larger amounts of joy to anyone in this pandemic—a collective life trauma hitting everyone at the same time, and in mostly the same ways, with endless amounts of stress. But when so much is so bad all the time, it’s easy to forget how something as seemingly small as a gifted meal brought the greatest relief in past tough times. And, in our state of adversity, it’s an act that allows us to bestow a tactile, impactful gesture of friendship and love while we must, still, remain apart. ■

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Sip & Savor ▪ Spring 2021