Elegantly Toasted: A history of “toasts” and how to make a good one!
By Debra Meiburg MW Some people like their toast in the morning, but others prefer to toast while holding a glass. No one knows for sure how the tradition of toasting began, but surely toasts have been around from the moment our ancestors discovered that fermented juices can make you tipsy. The Greeks are amongst [...]
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A-B-C of Chilean Wine: The must-know grape varieties, regions & producers
By Debra Meiburg MW Chile has some of the world’s most spectacular vineyards. Bounded by the Atacama desert, the Pacific Ocean, snow-capped Andes and southern ice fields, this is the only wine region where both cacti and snow are interspersed amongst vines. As with most of the Americas, grapes were first planted in Chile by [...]
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A Contact Sport: The in’s & out’s of wine fermentation
By Debra Meiburg MW A fermentation tank is like a good dance club: full of energy, heat and bubbles. Surging around the tank is the usual cast of characters: a mob of bacterial hoi-polloi trying to wheedle their way past choosy door bouncers and yeasts strutting into the club with only one thing on their [...]
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Cool, Calm & Collected
By Debra Meiburg MW In some cities around the world, where every square cm is precious, it’s not easy to find storage space for wine. For most people, storing more than a few wine bottles at home is out of the question, which is fine as all but a handful of wines should be drunk [...]
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Pinot Princess
by Debra Meiburg MW Chefs and sommeliers are challenging the old credo “white wine with white meat; red wine with red meat” and pinot noir (pee-noh nwarh) is just the wine to flirt with the rules. A delicate red, pinot perfectly slinks onto the table with turkey, chicken and duck, as well as with meatier [...]
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Hangover Cures
by Debra Meiburg MW Congratulations, apparently you’re semi-vertical and able to read. Even so, you might be suffering from what is known medically as veisalgia, which is an amalgamation of the Greek word algia (pain) and a Norwegian word (kveis) with too many consonants to pronounce this morning, which means “uneasiness following debauchery.” The cure [...]
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