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Discover the “meat strips or tongues” from South Africa made of dried meat added with vinegar and spices. Did you know its impressive nutritional chart?
Learn how to make little smokies with barbecue sauce, in the slow cooker, and wrapped in bacon and dusted with brown sugar. This is an epic appetizer!The Taub family, owners of Palm Bay International, one of the nation’s leading wine importers, is expanding its presence in California. The family’s Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon brand Heritance has purchased Saracina Vineyards in Mendocino from John Fetzer and his wife, Patty Rock. The deal, which closed in early October, includes a winery, 250 acres of land with 100 acres planted to vines, along with the Saracina brand and its second label Atrea. The sale price was not disclosed.
The deal gives the Taub family an established winery and a foothold in Mendocino. They plan to move production of their Heritance, Au Contraire and Angry Bunch brands to Saracina’s winemaking facility. Winemaker Alex MacGregor will continue to make the Saracina and Atrea wines.
Marc Taub, CEO of Taub Family Companies, which includes Palm Bay International and Taub Family Selections, had been looking for a home for his growing roster of California brands. “Marc was familiar with the Saracina ranch and loves the property,” Bethany Burke, senior vice president of corporate communications at Taub Family Companies, told Wine Spectator.
Fetzer and Rock will no longer be involved in the winery, but they have retained part of the Saracina property, including a residence. The eldest of 11 siblings, Fetzer launched Saracina in 2001—nearly a decade after his family sold Fetzer Vineyards to spirits company Brown-Forman (Fetzer and its affiliated brands are now owned by Chile’s Concha y Toro). The couple built a tasting room and wine cave on the 600-acre former Sundial Ranch near the town of Hopland, and tapped MacGregor and consultant David Ramey to make the wines.
Saracina makes wine from a variety of grapes including Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc from its sustainably farmed estate vineyards and purchased grapes. The winery produces around 7,500 cases of wine annually.
Once one of the foremost dynasties in California wine, the Fetzer family has been divesting its wine holdings in recent years. In 2017, the family sold its 80-acre ranch in Redwood Valley, the site of the original Fetzer winery, to cannabis distributor Flow Kana. The Saracina sale leaves third-generation vintners Jake and Ben Fetzer as the only family members with their own wine label, Masut, in the Eagle Peak appellation of Mendocino.
Marc Taub’s father, David, who passed away in 2012, launched Palm Bay in 1977, importing Italian wine. The family now imports and produces nearly 90 wine and spirits brands from 17 countries around the world, with a focus on Italy. In 2014, Marc turned to California, launching Pinot Noir brand Au Contraire in Sonoma. They later added Heritance, which was founded by wine-industry veterans Bernard Portet and Don Chase.
The Taub family doesn’t plan to make any change to the Saracina wines but they will add new projects down the road. “We definitely want to take advantage of what [Fetzer and Rock] have been doing here,” said Burke. “Marc is looking at this as a long-term opportunity to lay down roots for his family.”
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A look at Jeju Noodle Bar: America’s first Michelin-starred noodle soup restaurant.
People are tuning into the sounds of others chewing on fried chicken and slurping fried noodles as the ASMR subculture spills onto the world of food.
Discover what it is like to work with chef and restaurateur Marco Pierre White
From classic gingerbread men and snowballs to stained glass sugar cookies and gluten-free and vegan cookies, you’ll find the best assortment of holiday cookies!This is an absolute must for your Thanksgiving holiday menu! It’s so easy and so good with the sage-butter and crisp bacon bits!
Say hello to your new favorite Thanksgiving side dish for 2018.
It’s mashed sweet potatoes with maple, sage and bacon. A super fun twist to the usual mashed potatoes.
But to be honest, I think this is actually way better.
Hello, we have sage butter mixed right in! I’m sorry but no, you can’t top that. Not to mention, the crisp bacon bits right on top.
It’s absolutely perfect. And I’ve been eating it by the spoonful for recipe testing to ensure you get the very best mashed sweet potatoes this holiday season.
See, I take my job very seriously, you guys.
This is an absolute must for your Thanksgiving holiday menu! It’s so easy and so good with the sage-butter and crisp bacon bits!
Tag @damn_delicious on Instagram and hashtag it #damndelicious.
The post Mashed Sweet Potatoes appeared first on Damn Delicious.
Few main courses are as elegant and decadent as a standing rib roast. You can master the art of roasting it to perfection with these tips and video recipes.Bordeaux winemakers hoping for a big harvest in 2018, after France’s cataclysmic frosts of 2017, were disappointed. Heavy rains early in the season led to mildew, while hail in some areas also thinned the crop. Then, the weather dramatically changed course. “Sun, sun, sun,” is how Christian Moueix, who oversees several estates on the Right Bank, described the summer, citing data showing record levels of solar exposure.
While the growing season was challenging, ideal weather late in the season ripened the crop well. Quantity may be low, but vintners have high hopes for quality.
Welcome to Wine Spectator’s 2018 Wine Harvest Report, our coverage of Northern Hemisphere wine regions. (You can find our Southern Hemisphere 2018 reports here.) While we won’t know how good a vintage is until we taste the finished wines, these reports offer firsthand accounts from top winemakers in leading regions.
The first half of 2018 was about protecting vines from disease triggered by heavy rains. To combat aggressive mildew, growers across the region were forced to take added precautions. Some were luckier than others. Although not unscathed, Moueix was fortunate. “Mildew affected only a few blocks, but since it was before crop thinning, it did not affect the final yield,” he said. Vigilant crop management was essential, so that his teams could prune off infected clusters in time, he added. And those wineries who employ either organic or biodynamic farming faced even bigger challenges, since they have less options for fighting mildew.
During the dry, summer months, reserves from the spring rains were critical. Soil type and vine age were both factors. Damien Barton Sartorius, co-owner of châteaus Langoa Barton, Léoville Barton and Mauvesin Barton in the Médoc, notes that when it came time to harvest, “We started with the younger plants that struggled from drought, as their roots are not long enough to reach underground water.”
Philippe Dhalluin, who oversees Château Mouton-Rothschild and two other properties in Pauillac, added, “Estates located on deep gravelly soils like Mouton or d’Armailhac got very small berries and consequently very low yields.” Conversely, “an estate like Clerc Milon with subsoil slightly richer in clay had better yields.”
With the exception of sweet-wine producers, most vintners were grateful when summer conditions continued into autumn. Mild temperatures and little rain gave growers flexibility in timing their picks based on each grape variety’s ripeness levels.
At Château Lynch Bages in Pauillac, harvest progressed quickly. The team began picking white grapes on Sept. 5. “After a relatively late bud burst, the vintage never stopped gaining [speed], resulting in a rather early picking,” said proprietor Jean-Charles Cazes.
Château Angélus in St.-Emilion was in no rush to pick—harvest lasted from Sept. 24 to Oct. 11. “September was a very mellow month, allowing us to pick the grapes slowly at perfect maturity,” said public relations manager Victoire Touton.
There were worries that the drastic weather reversal would hurt thin-skinned Merlot grapes, but all varieties excelled this year, vintners say. Thick-skinned Cabernet Sauvignon proved fairly resistant to spring mildew, and slow-ripening Petit Verdot benefited greatly from the extra weeks of warmth.
The outlook for white wines is equally positive. Pascal Chatonnet, who owns four Right Bank properties, admits that he was skeptical about this year’s Sauvignon Blanc crop when harvest began, but within only a few hours, “Fermentation had revealed the potential of the vintage.”
The challenging weather made life more difficult in dessert-wine regions, however. Hailstorms pummeled Sauternes during the summer. François Amirault, technical director at Château de Fargues, reports that they lost 80 percent of the crop. Additionally, drought extended into fall, hindering botrytis development until much needed rain and humidity arrived in late October. “We were approximately three weeks behind our average harvest start date,” said Aline Baly of Château Coutet in Barsac.
Overall, the Bordelais are optimistic, despite the setbacks. Although the year’s weather conditions are reminiscent of the less-than-remarkable 1962 vintage, many believe the potential quality of the wines could be on par with classic vintages such as 1990, 2005 and 2010. Bordeaux’s farming techniques have come a long way since 1962, after all.
Jean-Michel Laporte, director of Château Talbot in St.-Julien, is hesitant about making judgments just yet. “It’s too soon to compare it with another great recent vintage, but it tastes really good, and looks incredibly promising.”
Château Margaux’s managing director, Philippe Bascaules, was more unabashedly confident. Like many others, Château Margaux suffered low yields in 2018. But, said Bascaules, “In terms of quality, no doubt, this vintage will be among the greatest vintages produced at Margaux.”
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