Talk-A-Vino

Meritage Time!

Let’s start with the answer for the Wine Quiz #37 – About History of Wines and Holidays. First, you were supposed to identify the US president who signed the bill fixing Thanksgiving celebration to the 4th Thursday in November. In the second part of quiz, you were supposed to add a missing name to the list of great contributors, or may be even “founding fathers”  of the California wine industry. I’m glad to tell you that we have a winner for the first question – wineeveryday was correct to answer C, Franklin D. Roosevelt – while Lincoln was the first president to officially issue Thanksgiving Proclamation, the holiday was floating until FDR actually singed the bill fixing the date to the 4th Thursday in November – here is the link if you want to read more.

The second part of the quiz was harder. Actually, the list of people, all of them been extremely instrumental in upbringing of the California wine industry, was taken from the Culinary Institute of America Vintners Hall of Fame inductees of 2007 – and the missing name was of Agoston Haraszthy, Hungarian immigrant who in 1857 planted some of the first European varietals in California on Buena Vista property.

Now, let’s talk about interesting stuff. On November 19th, Wine Spectator published their 2012 Wine Spectator Top 100 list (here is the link). You can explore all of the Top 100 information freely until November 27th, after which date the information will be available only for subscribers. From that Top 100 list, I find the Top 10 group  quite interesting (not necessarily a positive word here) – the cheapest wine is $40, and practically none of those wines are available anywhere in the country, and if they are available, it would be from a different vintage. Wine of the year is Shafer Relentless Napa Valley 2008 (96, $60) – should be a good wine, but good luck finding it. In the top 10, there are 2 wines from California, 4 from France, and 1 each from Italy, Oregon, Australia and Argentina. If you care to share it, what is your take on the Wine Spectator Top 100 list?

So by now, you probably already heard about invigorating review of Guy Fieri’s new restaurant called Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square – but in case you missed, it makes quite an exciting reading. Guy Fieri is most famous as a host of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives ( triple-D) program on Food Network, which I personally enjoy watching. The review, which appeared last week in the New York Times, became an instant sensation, reaching 100,000 views/shares within the first hour. My friend Emil rightfully called the New York Times’ review a “rant-and-a-half” – it takes the form of an open letter and definitely worth  reading – the amount of critique from this one review would be enough to kill 5 restaurants. Mr. Fieri came up with an answer, which is lame at the best in my opinion –  and it seems that Yelping community concurs with New York Times’ opinion.

Considering that tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I still have a lot of things to do, this is all I have for you for today. Ahh, yes – don’t miss WTSO’s Magnum Monday on November 26th – should be very interesting.

Happy Thanksgiving and Cheers!

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