The United States of paranoia

Planning world domination, fueled by Burgundy

Just because you were born in a manger doesn’t mean you are a horse. I stumbled upon that bit of proverbial wisdom several times in the buildup to Christmas last year. It seems somehow applicable to a recent visit to Arizona where, despite the non-vinous-friendly environs, I had some amazing wines. On the Cabernet front, I finally had the opportunity to taste Alpha Omega. I mentioned this storied Napa Valley wine back in July when I wrote about the wines from its San Luis Obispo cousin, Tolosa Winery. I was with friends at an undisclosed, semi-secure venue, pursuing a plot for world conquest. As a result, my attention was not as focused on this excellent wine as it should have been.

James Jeffrey

There’s a sherry for everyone

On cold nights, a zesty margarita just isn’t going to cut it. You need a bolder tipple: a glass of sherry, the fortified wine favored by retired generals, members of the Diogenes Club and Ordinariate priests swotting up on Thomas Aquinas for the next Sunday sermon. It’s an appropriate drink with which to reflect on the complexity of life itself. You can go from the crispest blanco sherry, through a series of progressively richer flavors, to the most moreish dulce rum-colored sherry. When I passed through Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain’s Andalucía region, every bar was jammed with great quantities and varieties of sherry. I had stumbled — literally, as I was hiking a hundred miles of the Camino from the coastal city of Cádiz to Seville — upon the Mecca of sherry.

Timothy Jacobson

The beauty of the Beaumont inn

It is not often these days that I get to return to the Beaumont, an old inn in the Kentucky Bluegrass first visited half a century ago. The cliché that time and distance make the heart grow fonder has truth in it, as I have relearned this season. The Beaumont has been in the food and lodging business since 1917. It is owned and operated by branches of the Dedman family whose roots reach back to the early days of trans-Appalachian settlement. The original building dates from the 1840s and was once a girls’ finishing school. The young ladies in crinolines are long gone, but not a certain air of gentility. The Beaumont has a worthy watering hole — the Owl’s Nest — refashioned from an old carriage shelter in 2003 when liquor-by-the-drink finally came to Harrodsburg.

Jane Stannus

A salt for all seasons

It takes four people, according to the French, to get a salad dressing right: a spendthrift for the oil, a miser for the vinegar, a wise man for the salt and a lunatic for the pepper. A tough cast to assemble, you might think, but the freehanded, the tightfisted and the insane aren’t such rare birds. The true needle in the haystack is the wise man who would have anything to do with a recipe involving four chefs. Cooks, broth, too many — enough said. Most wise men would be out of town before you could say “smoked oak salt flakes” ten times fast. But the point stands: getting the salt right isn’t a walkover. The rookie has to steer a tight course between undersalted Scylla and oversalted Charybdis.

Food & Drink