September 17, 2003
Stuff a Writer Likes to HearStuff I like to hear. A week ago, Larry, a guy I know from Los Alamos, told me he learned something in the wine column that day. That's the kind of stuff a writer likes to hear, especially since that was my intent in writing the piece!
Most wine writers, I think, dwell on the effete. Most wine writers intimidate. My goal is to enthuse, getting readers excited about drinking wine, and getting rid of the pretense. Buying wine is an intimidating experience anyway. You see all of these labels staring you in the face at Vons or Dino's. Where do you start?
It's a lot easier buying beer or booze-not so many choices for one thing.
It's my contention that wine is food to be consumed with food. As a food, wine enhances other food. And cooking with wine adds flavor to food. I have cooked with wine since I was in high school-long before I was legally able to drink it, thanks to my father. To this day, a favorite thing to cook, for me, is sirloin in a pan with carrots, potatoes, boiling onions, salt, pepper, garlic or maybe shallots, and wine-either red or white.
Last night I got a hankerin' for spaghetti. I browned ground sirloin, crushed four or five small garlic cloves, and simmered it in a pot with stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, basil, several bay leaves, and a sprig of fresh rosemary from a pot in my yard. I cooked up some capellini (another name for angel hair pasta), and I grated some Reggiano parmesan, and proceeded to have a feast with fresh tomato salad, and some Silver sangiovese.
Wine you don't finish you can cook with. Remember-wine is like milk or cheese, or bread. It will spoil after a while. You wouldn't want to drink an open bottle sitting next to your stove, after a month or two-but it's great to add to the spaghetti sauce as I did last night.
Writing about wine as I do, It's important that I not make assumptions-that readers know that pink wine spelled "vin gris" is pronounced VAN GREE. Or that a "magnum" is a double-sized bottle-1.5 liters-twice the size of a "normal" 750 ml bottle.
Pulitzer Prize Los Angeles Times media writer and wine writer, David Shaw, once wrote in a lead, as I recall, "A wine writer is an attorney with a typewriter." I'm sure the attorney reference was directed toward the prominent American wine writer, Robert M. Parker, Jr.
Parker is influential. He writes for the "hard core," the wine nerd. He does it well. My goal, on the other hand, is to enthuse the reader.
And you know Shaw's piece was written years ago with the reference to the "typewriter."
Using a Mac, Times wine columnist, Bob Senn, lives in the Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
