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Founded in 1996 ARCHIVE Sean Connery (1930-2020)
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IN THIS ISSUE HOW TO KEEP FOOD COSTS DOWN ON VACATION By John Mariani NEW YORK CORNER LOVE AND PIZZA CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO By John Mariani NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR AN INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN ZRALY By John Mariani ❖❖❖ HOW TO KEEP FOOD COSTS DOWN ON VACATION By John Mariani
One
of the greatest pleasures of
traveling—currently just a pipe dream for most
people—is the food of the region
visited. It is utterly baffling to me that
people who eat little but hamburgers
at home will order them away from home. And odd
as it seems, there are families
on vacation who see the sights, ride the rides
and take home the souvenirs, but
try to save a few bucks by cutting back on the
good regional food. I
understand how expensive eating on the road
can be, but I also believe that eating out at
new and interesting places in new
and interesting destinations is one of the
principal reasons to travel at all.
The Grand Canyon may nourish the soul but it
does nothing for a growling
stomach.
❖❖❖ NEW YORK
CORNER
By
John Mariani By John Mariani LOVE AND PIZZA Since, for the time being, I am unable to write about or review New York City restaurants, I have decided instead to print a serialized version of my (unpublished) novel Love and Pizza, which takes place in New York and Italy and involves a young, beautiful Bronx woman named Nicola Santini from an Italian family impassioned about food. As the story goes on, Nicola, who is a student at Columbia University, struggles to maintain her roots while seeing a future that could lead her far from them—a future that involves a career and a love affair that would change her life forever. So, while New York’s restaurants remain closed, I will run a chapter of the Love and Pizza each week until the crisis is over. Afterwards I shall be offering the entire book digitally. I hope you like the idea and even more that you will love Nicola, her family and her friends. I’d love to know what you think. Contact me at loveandpizza123@gmail.com —John Mariani To read previous chapters go to archive (beginning with March 29, 2020, issue. LOVE AND PIZZA Cover Art By Galina Dargery CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
After breakfast the next
day with Giancarlo, there was much to do to
prepare for the party, and though
Nicola offered to help, the staff seemed put
off by the offer. For
it was not a guest’s job to do any work
while at the villa, and their pride was
somewhat offended.
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NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
FROM WINDOWS ON THE WORLD TO COVID QUARANTINE: AN INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN ZRALY By John Mariani
I
was incredibly busy before the
Covid lockdown. In 2019 I had traveled
to more than 60 cities around
the world for wine tastings and corporate events,
and I was on the same pace
for 2020. In addition, I had already started the
Advanced Wine Classes in
February and was in Napa Valley in early March at
a CIA conference. While I was
there, I was able to catch up with John Belcher,
Dorothy Gaither and Warren
Winiarski to celebrate their donation of their
writings to the
Warren Winiarski Wine Writers Collection at
the UC Davis
library.
I am
certainly doing more of
both! The irony of all of this is
Prohibition! Exactly 100 years
ago in 1920, Prohibition began, and alcohol was
banned by the government.
Now, in 2020, the government has decided that
alcohol is an Essential
Business and wine sales are soaring. I
recently read an article that said
online wine sales are up more than 250% from last
year. My retail sources
tell me that wine sales are booming, up anywhere
from 25 to 50-plus
percent.
In
1970, I was a history and
education major in college, living above a
pizzeria. I needed a job
to support myself, so I went downstairs and
asked the owner if she had any
work for me. She told me to go and see her
son, John Novi at the DePuy
Canal House (a four-star-rated New York
Times restaurant at that time). John hired
me as a waiter and eventually I
became the bartender in charge of ordering wine.
When people would ask to see
the wine list, I rattled off the fact that we had
the top three: red, white and
rosé. One night, a disgruntled customer gave
me a paperback book about
wine, which I read cover to cover. From then
on, I was hooked on
wine. As a history major, my interest in
wine was a natural progression,
and it became an all-consuming passion. At
the same time, John and I were
contacted by the local community college to teach
an adult education class about
wine and cheese. There I was at 20 years old,
getting paid to teach wine!
Also, during that time, I visited the wineries of
the Hudson Valley (all three
of them). I also went to see the wineries of the
Finger Lakes and worked with
Dr. Konstantin Frank. If Long Island had wineries,
I would have visited them
too, but that didn’t happen until 1973.
The
reason I wrote the new
chapter, “Window to the Wine and Food Revolution,
1970-2020,” is that the wine
market has totally changed. The best-selling
wines of the 1970s were
Riunite, Blue Nun, Lancers, Mateus, Yago Sangria
and the jug wines from Gallo,
Almaden and Paul Masson, all marketed non-descript
wines: all white was Chablis
and all red was Burgundy. The quality California
wines were in the early
stages. 5.
But
by 1980 Italy was producing a great number
of high
quality wines, from Gaja Barbarescos and
Biondi-Santi Brunellos to much
improved Chiantis, Pinot Grigio and sparkling
wines. I was referring
more to the 1970s, when I was in
Spain, Italy, France and Germany and experienced
their wines firsthand.
Most of the wines were not very good and some of
them undrinkable, from
Chianti, Rioja, and even the French wines from
Bordeaux and Burgundy were not
of the quality that they are today. When I visited
Château Margaux in 1975, the
weeds were higher than the vines! However,
there were a few exceptions as
you point out: Angelo Gaja was way ahead of
his time and producing great
wines, and so was Biondi-Santi, he was one of the
very few producing Brunello
de Montalcino at the time. Even Vega Sicilia
in Spain was producing
world-class wine. However, many wineries were not
making good wine, even in the
'80s, the 10 years didn't make that much of a
difference. I do agree that
things were getting better in the '80s, but it
really took well into the 1990s
to have a consistent quality of wines from
Europe. 5. How did the WW School begin? Was it a success from the start One
of the reasons I was hired at
Windows on the World was because of my education
and history degree as much as
it was for my wine knowledge. Windows on the
World restaurant started in
1976 and included a private luncheon club. I
started the Wine School in the
fall of 1976 and it was only open to our club
members. We started out
with 12 students because one bottle of wine served
12 people during a
tasting! Then the class grew to 24, and then
to 36, and members started
bringing their own guests and eventually we grew
to 150-plus students. It was
such a tremendous success, we opened it to the
public in 1980. It ran for
40 consecutive years (including after the 1993
bombing and the September 11th
destruction), graduating more than 20,000
students. Four years ago, I began the
Advanced Wine Classes because I wanted to do
something smaller (36 students)
and more intimate so that I could focus less on
the entertainment aspect of the
classes and concentrate more on tasting wine.
For
me, New York City is really
the wine capital of the world. Every wine
maker and owner comes through
New York, and you can get or taste almost
anything here. However,
when I first started and went to Europe after
college, I spent 10 months
visiting wineries. Then, when I got the job at
Windows on the World, Joe Baum
told me to create the biggest and best wine list
that New York has ever seen,
and he didn't care how much it cost! One of
Joe's friends was Alexis
Lichine and he told me to call him, so off to
France I went with Alexis on a
buying spree. We amassed an
unbelievable cellar in a very short
amount time, and soon after the opening, Windows
on the World sold more wine
than any restaurant in the world.
No.
When I started studying
wines, it didn't exist in the US. I was
self-taught and was the youngest
American sommelier in the U.S. at 20 years of age,
and the first American
sommelier in New York City, at 25 years of age in
1976. Now, people have started
referring to me as "the Father of American Wine
Education." The
Master Sommelier came to the U.S. in 1977 and the
Master of Wine in the
2000s. The British created the MW and the
MS. To this day, I still don’t
understand why we Americans don’t have our own
wine education degree.
I
think today is the high
point. The U.S. is the number one consumer
of wines in the world and all
50 states have wineries. If you told me that
50 years ago, I would have
told you that you were crazy. It has been a great
experience to watch this
happen over the past 50 years.
Never
used it—nor British
poetry—to describe wines. My philosophy is
you either like a wine or you
don't.
I do
not drink wines that are
overly alcoholic. It's not my style. I
am more into finesse and
elegance than power. I also find the
high-alcohol wines hard to pair with
food.
On
the positive side, they are
making very good sparkling wines south of London.
On the negative side,
Bordeaux is allowing new grapes to be planted that will not be
affected by a
shorter growing season, making for a more balanced
wine. In fact, every
wine region is looking at the same problem,
especially in warm climate regions,
like Napa Valley.
The
Windows on the World Complete Wine Course was a difficult book to put together. Not
only from a content
standpoint, but also from a technical one because
of the placement of all the
artwork, labels, maps and charts. Everything
has to follow a specific
format to maintain the original style. Due to
the Covid-19 shutdown, I had
the time to really work on the new chapter and
update this book beyond any other
edition. I'm am very proud of this book. As
always, it takes a team of
people helping me with it, and I had the resources
of the best editors and art
department at Sterling Publishing. I feel
like the 35th anniversary
edition of this book is complete. It's the best
it's ever been. RESTAURANTS THAT WILL
NEVER BE ON OUR WISH LIST
"The meal cost $400
and came with rules. No. 1: No using cellphones,
except to document the dinner and the chefs
preparing it. 'Please do the Instagram, the
Facebook, the Twitter; give me the fame, I need the
fame,' said Gaggan Anand, whose
restaurant bore
the same name. Clad in black, with a booming voice
that suited his hulking figure, he stalked between a
vast kitchen island and an L-shaped table for 14.
'Those of you with good cameras, if you can take a
photo of me scratching my ass, you get a bottle of
Champagne.' Rule No. 2: 'If this is on your ‘Things
to Do in Bangkok’ list, you’re in the wrong
restaurant.' Anand wore his hair in a messy bun; he
sounded like a principal scolding a group of wayward
adolescents. “If you are here to judge me, you are
in the superwrong restaurant, because we are
[expletive] judging you.” He went on: `This is not
a, what do you call it?' — his fingers curled into
air quotes — “ ‘fine-dining experience.’”—Sheilah
Mariker, "The Fed Up Chef," NY TImes
(10/25/20). YES, PLACE YOUR NAPKIN ON THE SEAT
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FEATURED
LINKS: I am happy to report
that the Virtual
Gourmet is linked to four excellent
travel sites: Everett Potter's Travel Report: I consider this the best and
savviest blog of its kind on the web. Potter is a
columnist for USA
Weekend, Diversion, Laptop and Luxury Spa Finder,
a contributing editor for Ski and a frequent contributor
to National
Geographic Traveler, ForbesTraveler.com
and Elle Decor.
"I’ve designed this site is for people who take
their travel seriously," says Potter. "For
travelers who want to learn about special places
but don’t necessarily want to pay through the nose for
the privilege of staying there. Because at the end
of the day, it’s not so much about five-star
places as five-star experiences." THIS WEEK:
Eating Las
Vegas JOHN CURTAS has been covering
the Las Vegas food and restaurant scene
since 1995. He is the co-author of EATING LAS
VEGAS – The 50 Essential Restaurants (as
well as the author of the Eating Las
Vegas web site: www.eatinglasvegas.
He can also be seen every Friday morning as
the “resident foodie” for Wake Up With the
Wagners on KSNV TV (NBC) Channel 3 in
Las Vegas.
MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET
NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Publisher: John Mariani. Editor: Walter Bagley. Contributing Writers: Christopher Mariani,
Robert Mariani, Misha Mariani, John A. Curtas, Gerry Dawes, Geoff Kalish,
and Brian Freedman. Contributing
Photographer: Galina Dargery. Technical
Advisor: Gerry
McLoughlin. If you wish to subscribe to this
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