Falernum, a syrup that originates in Barbados, pairs nicely with rum. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In a time of $15, infused vodka cocktails with too many ingredients (add a dash of pretentiousness), a simple drink is hard to come by. “Portlandia,” as always, captured it best: “That is a ginger-based bourbon drink infused with honey lemon and chard ice. Then building off of that base, we’ve got cherry tomato, lime zest. I actually made the bitters myself at home. We’ve got egg whites, eggshell, egg yellows. Rotten banana.”

The fancy mixologist forgot one ingredient, though: falernum.

This rum-based syrup with lime and spices—typically almond or ginger—originated in Barbados and likely isn’t stocked at your neighborhood bar. It can be alcoholic or nonalcoholic when served sans rum. Records pinpoint its popularity in America circa the ’30s, but the history gets fuzzy—even among well-read mixologists.

The word falernum originates from the Roman wine falernian (or falernum in Latin.) But modern falernum, found in classic tiki drinks like the Mai Thai or the Zombie, has little in common with the original use of the word except for it’s coloring. But even that is a little off—Pliny The Elder was once quoted describing it’s color as a rich amber. [Pliny and Cicero’s feelings on the potent wine is also detailed in the Harvard Divinity School's Theological Library's records (reprinted from 1564)]. In Food in the Ancient World: From A-Z, Andrew Dalby writes that the earliest reference to the fine Roman wine produced near Mt. Falernus was by Polybius in about 140 B.C. The word falernum as it is spelled today was most likely not used until 102 B.C.

The wine, which Pliny rated second to Caecuban in his evaluation of Italian wines, was at its best when aged 15-20 years, becoming darker over time from a light amber, to fuscum (brown), to niger (black). He also stated that it was the only wine high enough in alcohol content to catch fire. The Alcohol by Volume (ABV) of Falernum today is roughly 18 percent, comparable to other liqueurs like Kahlúa (20 percent) or Amaretto (24 percent). According to Pliny, Falernian wine (a very different beverage altogether) was close to 30 percent.

But Pliny’s second-favorite wine shares little more than a namesake with the syrup first invented in Barbados. In fact, a New York Times article from 1892 entitled “In the Lore of Barbados: Redistilled Rum,” tells a very different tale of the drink’s etymology. It includes a housewife’s recipe for the mixture and describes a moment of misunderstanding that resulted in the syrup’s namesake:

Once, when a woman was asked for the ingredients, she answered in the dialect, ‘Haf a learn um’ – ‘Have to learn how it’s done.’ Hence the name.

A Washington Post article from 1937 cites the use of falernum to improve the Cuban drink “El Presidente.” The “reason for this definite cocksureness,” the columnist wrote, was the exotic island quality of classic “tiki” drinks.

But cocktail blogger, Darcy O’Neil, who has written extensively on falernum, dug up this gem of a newspaper article from the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1896 which includes a basic recipe for the Caribbean syrup:

O’Neil also cites the research of Ted Haigh, whose work suggests the origin of the drink to be in question. He was unable to find any references before the ‘30s, when the recipe “one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of the weak” received popularity in America.

In Explore Barbados (2000) Harry S. Pariser claims Bajan Henry Parkinson first mixed the ingredients (almonds, clove powder, ginger, crushed limes). His great-great-grandson, Arthur Stansfield, registered the combo in 1934 and brought it over to the states. But O’Neil says, a man named John D. Taylor claimed to invent falernum in 1890 and may have been responsible for the drink’s initial commercialization.

Tropical mixers like falernum gained popularity with Donn Beach‘s (Ernest Gantt) invention of the tiki bar in 1931. In ’33, Beach claimed to have invented the infamous Mai Tai which included the Barbadian mixture. By the ’70s, though, the thatched roof aesthetic—along with falernum cocktails—experienced a decline. In And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, Wayne Curtis details the rise and fall of the “Tiki Era” of cocktails:

“Perhaps the most startling death knell for tiki rang out in 2000, when the glorious Kahiki restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, built in 1961 and featuring a forty-foot high tiki with a fireplace in its mouth was demolished to make way for a Walgreen’s drugstore.”

It’s difficult to track down records of homemade concoctions of the syrup predating these newspaper clippings, leaving plenty of room for variations on the recipe. But one thing most cocktail connoisseurs can agree on: Though falernum’s got a fuzzy past, it’s certainly obscure enough to impress party guests at your next “tiki era revival” hula party.

Imperial Stout is a high-alcohol rendition of standard English stouts born about 300 years ago through a series of sea voyages between England and Russia. It stands in ably as a Christmas Eve nightcap—and can be squeezed into a stocking. Photo by Andrew Bland.

With Christmas tunes, ugly sweaters and tacky plastic reindeer out in full force, it seems it’s time again to blend up some rum-spiked eggnog—but today, I’m going to stoke up a different sort of holiday spirit: really strong beer. ‘Tis the season, after all. We often see a spike in the number of extra potent beers about now, the common notion being that a touch more alcohol will warm the bones on cold nights. “High-alcohol” beers, by some standards, might include 6 or 7 percent alcohol by volume holiday releases, like Deschutes Brewing’s Jubelale, Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome and Marin Brewing’s Hoppy Holidaze, and if you’re a regular sipper of light lagers, these seasonal beers are festive enough. But it’s the ludicrously potent, double-digit beers that I’m thinking of now—beers with attitude, charisma, strength, flavor, culture and, especially, spirit.

Imperial Stout. Few beers may so strongly evoke the image of dark winters, frozen European landscapes and long ship voyages as Imperial Stout. This pitch-black, super-strong sipper has become a favorite in modern American craft beer circles, but the style has a long and compelling history, too. The story takes us across oceans and continents, to the damp streets of London and even into the dens of emperors. While England made the first Imperial Stout, it was Russia that drank the stuff. Czar Peter the Great is known to historians for his productive time as Russia’s leader from 1682 until 1725. But many beer geeks only know the famed czar’s role in the invention of Imperial Stout. Peter visited England in 1698, when he was in his late 20s. Here he took a liking to the nation’s black and bitter stouts. Before returning to Russia, Peter requested that a shipload be delivered at a later date. England proudly answered the request—but with embarrassing results: the beer casks, deep in the ship’s hold, froze during transport through the frigid Baltic Sea. The water expanded and burst the barrels. The beer was ruined. (Actually, they might have discovered the trick now known as “freeze distillation” had they only the courage to taste the stout. See below.) As legend tells it, the Barclay Brewery of London came forward with a solution: Raise the alcohol level to stave off frost and try again. They custom brewed a new batch, and the effort seems to have worked. The next delivery made it to Peter in shipshape, and the bigger-boned rendition of the standard English stout swept the emperor off his feet. Deliveries became routine, and the beer is now often called Russian Imperial Stout. Though the first batch that Peter tasted may only have been about 7 percent ABV (like Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout, brewed in North Yorkshire—a classic representative of the original), modern brewers have upped the numbers. North Coast Brewing Company‘s rendition runs 9 percent, Lagunitas Brewing‘s is 10, Three Floyds‘ 15 and Dogfish Head‘s a smashing 18. These are the big guys that sit well in a brandy snifter—and they fit nicely in a Christmas stocking.

Other Holiday Spirit Boosters

Samichlaus Classic Malt Liquor. Billed as “The World’s Most Extraordinary Beer,” Samichlaus Classic measures 14 percent ABV and back in the 1990s was recognized as the world’s strongest lager. The beer is brewed once per year, on December 6, and after months of aging, released about a year later. Trust me: It’s not going to be a favorite of just everyone. It barely tastes like beer, in fact. It is sweet, sticky, syrupy and raisiny, with hardly a hint of hops. Colored like brandy, it drinks about like one, too. In other words, go slow. The beer, for a piece of trivia, means Santa Claus in Zurich, the Swiss-German dialect of the Alps.

Samichlaus Classic is a Christmastime lager from the Castle Brewery Eggenberg in Austria. At 14 percent alcohol, the beer drinks like brandy. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Bernt Rostad.

Ice Beers: No—don’t go plunking any ice cubes in your stout. Ice beers, in fact, are made through quite the opposite process: Beer is placed in a freezer, where water in the beer turns to ice, while the alcohol remains in liquid form. As clear ice floats to the surface of the beer, a stronger, condensed version of the original brew is left behind. It’s basic chemistry—and a trick brewers call freeze distillation. It’s illegal, in fact, in the United States—mostly. That is, the law’s fine print says it’s OK to use freeze distillation to add trace amounts of alcohol—a loophole that allows big breweries to make such products as Molson Ice and Bud Ice, which are only barely affected by the process. However, we have secret info from industry insiders that the technique occurs in full force at some brewpubs, where the often smooth, velvety beer may be served on tap. Customers thus unwittingly consume great beer, contraband and evidence of the crime all in one glass. The first ice beer is believed to have been made by accident in Kulmbach, Germany, in 1890, when a cask of beer was forgotten and left out on a freezing night. In the morning, the brewers tasted the beer and found the boozy liquid under the cap of ice to be strong and delicious. Sound tasty? You’re in luck, because while making ice beers is illegal in America, importing them from Europe—where freeze distillation is completely lawful—is not. Kulmbacher Eisbock and Aventinus Weizen-Eisbock are two available examples of the style.

He’Brew Jewbelation Sweet 16 from Shmaltz Brewing. What? You don’t believe a fat man in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer delivers billions of presents around the world every December 24? Yeah—it does seem sometimes like a grand parental hoax. But far from being left out in the cold this winter, you just might be enjoying the best specialty drink of all: an extreme Hanukkah ale called Jewbelation, brewed by the Shmaltz Brewing Company in upstate New York. The beer, released this month, commemorates the 16th anniversary of the brewery’s birth. The anniversary series began with Shmaltz’s eighth, when the beer was made with eight kinds of hops, eight malts and to 8 percent ABV. In following years, the numbers pattern was maintained—and now, Jewbelation has morphed into a 16 percent ABV giant. It’s dark brown and easy to love for anyone with a small glass and a taste for brownies, chocolate and coffee. One bottle contains 480 calories, so divvy this one between friends—and if you believe in him, don’t leave it for Santa: There’s a lot of skinny chimneys out there.

Not a beer fan? Then drink glögg. The Swedish rendition of mulled wine, glögg, or gløgg, is a keyboard nightmare—so we’re going to call it glogg. Red wine, orange peel, cloves and cardamom are the essential ingredients of this Christmastime drink, though some versions contain additions like sugar, cinnamon sticks, brandy and Port wine. My own preference is for something heavily spiced but on the drier side. Glogg can be purchased ready-made in bottles, but the drink is so easy—and, at the risk sounding cheesy, fun and festive—to make that not stewing up your own would just be silly. Try this recipe. The wine (it needn’t be expensive) is heated slowly in a cauldron with orange slices, whole cloves and cardamom powder bathing in the drink. These and other ingredients’ flavors leech into the wine, and the warm aromas fill the house. Now, before your company arrives, get the pronunciation down: That funny “o” is, in fact, pronounced like the double “o” in hook, making glogg actually more like “glug.” Which allows you, as host, to look from guest to guest to guest as you take drink orders and suggest, “Glug? Glug? Glug?” Mulled wine just isn’t the same.

A crock of glogg simmers on the stove. Often brewed during the holidays and served warm, glogg is a Scandinavian rendition of mulled wine. It is made with red wine, orange peel, cloves and cardamom. Photo courtesy of Flickr user thebone.

Drinking Down Under? As a northerner, I’ve always been intrigued if not confused by the notion of celebrating Christmas at the peak of summer. But for many in the world, it just might be 95 in the shade this Christmas Day. For you folks, I feel I need to suggest something, but I’ll be honest: I’m clueless. Cold lemonade? Watermelon juice? Fruit smoothies? Ice water? Really: We northerners are fascinated: How do you drink in the holidays?

Read more articles about the holidays in our Smithsonian Holiday Guide here

Photo courtesy of Flickr user 96dpi

“A glass of the Chianti. With ice on the side.”

While I’ve had more than a few raised eyebrows shot in my direction for willingly diluting my red wines with ice, my distaste for the acetic sting that accompanies warm wine far outweighs my concern for thinning out my drink with a cube or two of ice. I’ve often wondered about the age-old “rule” that red wine should be served at room temperature, while white wines should be served chilled. Personally, I’ve always found room temperature red wine to be, well, repulsive.

It turns out that my uncouth icing of the reds is not completely unjustified. Most red wines are served too warm; the “room temperature” rule originated in Europe, where room temperature is between 60 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit. On the other hand, chilled white wine came from the European cellar, where temperatures hover around 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

In America, to achieve the ideal wine temperature you actually have to cool red wines and warm white wines, assuming your reds are stored in a room temperature wine rack and your whites are kept cold (too cold!) in the refrigerator. Average room temperatures can be over 70 degrees and most refrigerators are a frosty 35 degrees Fahrenheit. One critic recommends putting a bottle of red wine in the fridge for 45 minutes before serving while taking a bottle of white wine out of the fridge 30 minutes prior to serving.

For those with a more refined wine-tasting palette, temperature can be adjusted to accommodate bold, dark versus light, fruity red wines, and white wines can be served warmer or colder depending on whether they are sweet and full or crisp and light. Between a robust Bordeaux and a bright Pinot Grigio, the temperature graduation for serving wine runs between about 65 degrees to 45 degrees Fahrenheit, give or take two or three degrees.

The reason temperature is so important to bringing out the flavor of wines is that warming or chilling wine can unlock different layers of flavors within the wine. Serving wine at a temperature too far from its ideal range may overpower desirable flavors with alcohol or tannins.

When wine is served too warm, the dominant flavor can be that of alcohol, masking the subtler flavors of the wine’s ingredients. This effect is particularly noticeable with strong red wines that have a higher alcohol content to begin with. On the other hand, chilling a wine brings out greater astringency, which means the wine tastes sharp and tart as the flavor of tannins is emphasized. The trick is to find the happy medium for each wine, especially important in bringing out a wine’s aroma. Goldilocks had it right about more than just porridge when she said, “Too hot, too cold….just right.”

The good news is that there are no hard and fast rules for the “exact” correct temperatures for serving wines; it truly is to the preference of the individual. The chart above page can be used as a guideline, but by experimenting with a wine’s temperature, wine enthusiasts can fine tune their favorite “flavor sweet spot” of aromas and flavors.

Even my habit of dumping ice cubes into my red wine turns out to not be completely unrefined, although the practice is definitely a point of contention between wine experts. Famous chef Mario Batali, who was featured on the Food Network’s “Iron Chef America” and his own cooking show “Molto Mario,” has been noted to chill and dilute his wine with fruit-juice-based ice cubes. I’ll consider that permission enough to continue my controversial use of ice.

Cheers to that.

I love my mom and all, but I also want to recognize another set of mothers—those blobs of yeast and bacterial cultures found floating in unpasteurized cider, wine vinegar, and other fermented liquids, like cloudy constellations of pond scum. The Dutch have a word for mud and mire (modder) that may have lent its name to these mothers, but given the proliferation of the term across Europe—French mère de vinaigre or Spanish madre del vino—etymologists suspect that these slimy sediments of mother derived from the mother who takes care of you.

Two mothers seemingly at odds, right? Well, thankfully, the Oxford English Dictionary made a valiant, if somewhat perplexingly worded attempt, to tease out exactly why the lees at the bottom of the barrel came to be named for your female parent:

The transition of sense is difficult to explain; but most probably the scum or dregs of distilled waters and the like was regarded as being a portion of the ‘mother’ or original crude substance which had remained mixed with the refined product, from which in course of time it separated itself. (The term may possibly have belonged originally to the vocabulary of alchemy.) An explanation sometimes given, that ‘mother of vinegar’ was so called on account of its effect in promoting acetous fermentation, does not agree with the history of the use. It has been pointed out that ancient Greek γραῦς old woman, is used in the sense ‘scum, as of boiled milk,’ but the coincidence is probably accidental.

Wine left out in the open air will spontaneously ferment into vinegar if the right airborne microbes land on the surface (Acetobacter bacteria and Mycodermi aceti yeast); the oxidation process can also be kick-started by mixing in the cloudy undefined bacterial and fungal cultures left at the bottom of an old vinegar container—an old, yet reliable, mother. These cultures work in much the same way that yeast or sourdough starters give rise to beer and bread (why these cultures are more often called starters and not mothers remains one of the many vagaries of the English language). Perhaps, then, it’s not all surprising that one mother gave birth to another.

Photo (cc) by Flickr user Shannalee | FoodLovesWriting

Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Image courtesy of the Phillips Collection.

Mealtimes are fairly well represented in fine art. Wayne Thiebaud had an affinity for deserts. Manet gave us images of Breakfast in the Studio and Luncheon in the Grass. And I think Da Vinci may have a dining scene in his oeuvre as well. And then there’s Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s instantly recognizable scene of a convivial bunch of diners enjoying a summertime meal alfresco. Completed in 1881, Luncheon of the Boating Party is one of the most famous midday meals committed to canvas, but it’s curious to note that in spite of the title, there’s precious little food to be seen. Taking a cue from Clara Peller, I have to ask: where’s the lunch?

“It’s like a painting about the most perfect meal that ever was—but you can’t tell what most of it was,” says Phillips Collection Chief Curator Eliza Rathbone. By the time we see the table, all that’s left are a few not-quite-empty bottles of wine and a compotier of fruit such as grapes and pears, perhaps a peach or two. “It’s the end of the meal. And I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s such a beguiling picture. It’s of that time that comes when everyone has had a delicious meal, they’ve all gathered, they’ve focused on the food and now they’re just focusing on each other and this beautiful day and they don’t want it to be over. And we’ve all had those kinds of experiences where you want to linger and those are the best meals we ever have.”

The scene takes place at the Maison Fournaise, an open-air café on the Ile de Chatou where people of all social classes mixed and mingled as they enjoyed their leisure time away from the bustle of the city. In its heyday the Maison was a popular hangout for artists. It remains open for business, although the scenic views have changed a bit since Renoir’s time.

But it seems Renoir wasn’t much of a foodie. In a memoir, son Jean Renoir, who made a name for himself as a film director, remembers his father preferring simple fare, even when finer things—like veal and soufflés and custards—were laid on the table. In terms of food as a subject for his paintings, actual foodstuffs crop up most often in his still lifes, and even then, his attentions turned to raw ingredients instead of finished dishes. “He could paint a beautiful onion,” Rathbone says. “They’re the ingredients in their most natural form, which is their most beautiful moment. Let’s face it, a chopped onion isn’t nearly as beautiful as an onion whole. I think Monet and Caillebotte did more prepared food in their still lifes than Renoir did. We have a wonderful still life in the collection that’s a ham and it’s a marvelous subject in Gauguin’s hands. He makes the most beautiful ham you ever saw.”

Instead, Renoir seems to prefer to focus on the social aspect of the dining experience. “He was a people person, and people love food. So I think the subject came to him naturally.”

Next time you are in the D.C. area, you can enjoy Luncheon of the Boating Party first-hand at the Phillips Collection, which is a short walk from the Dupont Circle metro.

Why decant wines? Image courtesy of Flickr user SMercury98

Like the average casual wine consumer in America, I drink bottles mostly in the $10 to $15 range. I’ve never decanted my wine (poured it into another container to allow it to “breathe” before serving), and I’ve wondered if the practice really improves the taste or if it’s just a wine snob’s affectation. It seems even wine experts disagree on whether or when decanting makes a perceptible difference, and whether that difference is necessarily positive.

All agree on one clear benefit to decanting: done properly, it means any sediment that has accumulated in the bottle won’t end up in your glass. Sediment is usually only an issue with red wines, especially older ones, although decanting also works for unfiltered wines of any age. Decanting to improve a wine’s taste is more controversial.

First, a little (simplified) science: wine, as a fermented food, has a complex combination of chemical compounds. The character of the wine is constantly changing as these compounds interact with one another and with light, oxygen and humidity. Left to its own devices, wine will eventually turn to vinegar. Bottling or otherwise storing wine (as in casks or tanks) slows down that process almost to a halt—the trick is capturing it at the optimal point in its evolution. Most wines made today, especially those in the low to middle price ranges, are intended to be drunk within a few years of bottling. But others are meant to be further aged in the bottle, allowing them to develop what is considered the perfect balance of flavors.

Decanting, ideally into a wide-bottomed decanter that increases the wine’s surface area, exposes wine to oxygen, speeding up its transformation. The disagreement is over whether this change is significant to be worthwhile, and whether the change is always for the better.

Andrew L. Waterhouse, a California viticulture and enology professor, explains in Scientific American that an expensive (more than $20) red wine intended for cellar aging can taste astringent or “closed” if drunk before its time, and that decanting allows unpleasant volatile compounds to evaporate. In theory, it also “softens” the harsh taste of tannins, although Waterhouse notes that chemists have not observed changes to the tannins after decanting.

But Jim LeMar, a wine company sales representative, points out the risk of losing pleasant aromas through decanting. He argues on the blog Professional Friends of Wine that today’s winemaking techniques have mostly eliminated undesirable sulfuric smells, “rendering aeration before serving moot.” He continues, “Some VOCs [volatile organic compounds] are present in such minute concentrations and are so volatile that they may be exhausted and disappear completely with only a few seconds of aeration. Is it worth sacrificing these scents for what amounts to superstition that has little scientific basis?”

At the other extreme, Joseph Nase writes in New York magazine that all wines, even whites, can “come to life at an accelerated pace” through decanting. “This is especially important for younger wine,” he continues.

The latest wrinkle in the debate is the practice of “hyperdecanting”—mixing wine in a blender to maximize oxygen exposure. Nathan Myhrvold, co-author of the recent Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking and a proponent of the technique, claims it “almost invariably improves red wines—particularly younger ones, but even a 1982 Château Margaux.”

But John M. Kelly, a Sonoma Valley winemaker, contends on his blog that just because a wine objectively changes through decanting or hyperdecanting doesn’t mean everyone will prefer that change. It’s a fair point, and one that brings us to the bottom line: if you want to try decanting, go for it. If you like the results, keep doing it. If you don’t, or you can’t tell the difference, don’t bother. Decanting, as with everything about wine, is a matter of taste.

Image courtesy of Flickr user 2create.

I think most of us are familiar with the sardonic idiom “no good deed goes unpunished.” The idea is that no matter what goodness someone tries to bring into the world, the intentions will ultimately backfire. Foods that have been carefully crafted to induce pleasurable sensory experiences can also become victims of this truism. While there may be no use for crying over spilled milk, the loss of certain other foods might certainly merit a handkerchief. In the following stories, no good food goes unpunished.

Them’s the Breaks: Australia’s Mollydooker winery produces Velvet Glove, a premium shiraz that retails for around $200 a bottle. Its flavor has been described as a combination of “blueberry, black and damson plum, with a panoply of sweet spices” that makes for a “seductive, rich, viscous, and multi-layered Shiraz powerhouse.” With so much promise—and such a price tag—it was nothing short of tragic when, on July 22 of this year, an unsteady forklift dropped a container of the precious wine destined for the United States. Suffering a 6 meter (about 20 feet) fall, all but one of the 462 cases of wine were completely destroyed, at a loss of more $1 million.

Belated War Casualty: When a World War II-era German mine was found off the coast of Swanage, England in October 2009, the British Royal Navy was promptly alerted. Upon investigation, divers found a lobster had taken up residence there and lovingly named him Lionel. They tried to coax the crustacean out of his home, but the crabby lobster belligerently refused to be evicted, delivering a few nips to the trespassers. Needing to dispose of the bomb and left with no other alternatives, the Navy cleared the area and detonated the 600-pound explosive with Lionel still inside. (Granted, there was no indication that this particular lobster was going to be consumed—but he certainly had the potential.)

Smoked Sturgeon: The Mote Marine Laboratory’s Aquaculture Park in Sarasota, Florida raises Siberian sturgeon, which are harvested for their roe—a high-end treat we know in its packaged form as caviar. But on July 20, 2006, employees noticed plumes of smoke emanating from one of the buildings that houses the fish tanks, which contained sturgeon that were just mature enough to begin producing caviar. The six-alarm fire ultimately killed some 30 tons of fish—more than a third of the farm’s population. The caviar that could have been harvested from those fish over a three-year period would have netted an estimated $2.5 million.

Too Good to Eat: Truffles are considered to be a luxury foodstuff, and Italian white truffles are exceptionally rare mushrooms that grows underground and are hailed for their earthy flavor. One such mushroom weighing 1.9 pounds—the second largest known in the world—fetched $112,000 at an international charity auction in 2005. The winning bidder was a syndicate of regular diners at Zafferano, an Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge, England. The fungus was put on display at the dining spot for several days, attracting visitors from as far away as France and Spain. Soon after its arrival, chief chef Andy Needham had to leave on business and the truffle was locked in the kitchen’s fridge. Upon his return, it was discovered that the mushroom was past its peak and the only person to have savored a piece while the truffle was in its prime was newspaper reporter Nick Curtis, who raved about the truffle’s flavor, describing it as “halfway between that of a smoked cheese and strong mushroom.” The truffle was buried in Needham’s garden.

Overturned by Revolution: In 1979, Islamic rebels overthrew Iran’s monarchy to establish a theocratic republic—and Islamic law forbids the consumption of alcohol. Tehran’s Intercontinental Hotel was resplendent with fine and rare liqueurs in addition to having a fabulously well-stocked wine cellar, a collection that was estimated to be worth in the neighborhood of $1.2 million. But instead of exporting the spirits out of the country, revolutionary guards poured the entire stock down the gutter. As of June 1979, Tehran newspapers reported that more than $14 million worth of alcoholic beverages had been destroyed.

Apple, pumpkin and elderberry wine from Will o' Wisp Wines. Photograph by Lisa Bramen

The first thing that comes to mind at the mention of wine is “yes, please.” The second is “grapes.” And the last thing might have been pumpkins—until this week, when I tasted pumpkin wine.

Shelle Bailey, who lives near me in the Adirondacks, makes wine out of carrots, elderberries, apples and, yes, pumpkins—pretty much everything other than grapes. She recently got her federal permit to start a community-supported winery. Like a CSA (community-supported agriculture), a membership in the Will o’ Wisp Wines CSW gives Bailey the money up front to buy produce and supplies, which she will use to make unusual grapeless wines that will be distributed to members when they’re ready. Aside from the above, the varieties she plans to make include tomato, lemon-ginger, gooseberry, dandelion, beet, rose hips and maple.

The CSW model is novel, but it turns out that the kinds of wines she’s making have a history. Long before grapes cornered the fermented juice market, wine was made from all manner of fruits, vegetables and especially honey; mead, or honey wine, is “one of mankind’s most ancient alcoholic drinks,” according to The Glutton’s Glossary, by John Ayto.

Mead was also Bailey’s entrée into non-grape wines, both for drinking and for home fermenting. She stopped drinking most regular wine because of a bad reaction to sulfites, which are frequently added as a preservative so a wine can age without turning to vinegar. (All wines, including Bailey’s, also contain a certain amount of naturally occurring sulfites.) The wines she makes are meant to be drunk within a year.

Bailey learned to make wine through a combination of family history (she uses her father’s dandelion wine recipe) research (both online and by asking other hobbyists), and “a lot of trial and error,” she says. She is a proponent of “natural” wines—in contrast with commercial wineries, she doesn’t filter them, chemically “kill off” the yeast, blend batches or otherwise tinker with the flavor, for example by adding tannins. “I don’t want it to taste like a grape wine,” she says. “It’s kind of an ‘unwine.’ ”

My co-workers and I had a little tasting at my office this week. We tried Bailey’s apple, elderberry and pumpkin wines. They definitely would not be confused with a grape wine, although they didn’t taste how I expected. Bailey had told me she prefers dry wines, but I had been prepared for them to be a little sweet. They really weren’t; they tasted strongly of alcohol (this may have been partly because they had just been bottled; I suppose they may mellow with a few month’s age). Bailey says her wines average from 10 to 14 percent alcohol, which is comparable with grape wines. The apple, which I expected to taste like cider, was more like apple brandy—but, then again, not really like anything else. The pumpkin, the biggest surprise, was my favorite—slightly vegetal and almost imperceptibly sweet. The best description of her wine is probably Bailey’s own: she calls it “a light, dry, country-style/table wine with a fresh and uncomplicated taste.”

Full-color vending machine. Image courtesy of Flickr user Straws pulled at random.

The old method of getting goodies from a vending machine is being revamped by the Pepsi Corporation with its new Social Vending System. Dispensing with clunky slots for coins and bills in favor of a touchscreen that allows you to look at the nutritional information of the products therein, this new species of machine is also hopping on the social networking bandwagon: people can use the machines to send drinks to friends, complete with personalized text and video messages. (The recipient gets a message on a cell phone and they have to go to a Social Vending Machine and enter a code to redeem the gift.) But because you have to enter telephone numbers to use the social features of the machine, questions arise about how personal data is stored and used, an issue inherent in all social media. At this time, Pepsi says that personal data will not be stored unless the user grants permission.

Is this the next logical step in our ongoing quest for convenience or does it make accessing foodstuffs more complicated than it should be? Corporate efforts to create glowing vending-machine eye candy have a long and sometimes ridiculous history. (If you have the patience, this mid-century video walks you through the ins and outs of vending machine salesmanship.) Would you go to a machine for any of the following things?

1. Lobster

This variation on the claw machine arcade game may very well be the greatest visual pun in food marketing. That’s right: you use your gaming skills to catch your own live lobster; however, if you are fortunate enough to nab one of the skittering crustaceans, you may find yourself in a bit of a pickle. Apparently takeaway bags aren’t a standard part of the machine rig, so you may need to bring your own.

2. Eggs

Farmers who sell their eggs directly to consumers can pop a vending machine at the entrance of their property and passersby can drop in their money and walk away with a tray of farm fresh goods. Some famers have even noticed an increased demand for their products since installing the machine. The German branch of PETA offered its own variation, placing live hens in the machine to make a statement about the living conditions of these animals on farms.

3. Wine

In 2010, Pennsylvania unveiled two wine vending machines—however, users have to swipe their ID and pass a breathalyzer test before they can lay their hands on a bottle of vino. And if you have wine aficionados for friends, would you ever tell them that you’re serving them something that came from a vending machine?

4. Pecan Pie

The Bedroll Pecan Farm, Candy and Gift Company in Cedar Creek, Texas offers its wares via a vending machine, from a 9″ Pecan pie to pecan brittle.

5. An entire mini grocery run

The Shop 2000 allows users to buy toiletries, milk, snack items and other convenience store fare. In 2002, one of these machines was installed in D.C. near the intersection of 18th St. NW and California St. under the name Tik Tok Easy Shop. (It no longer existed as of 2003)

And for more on unique vending machines, check out Around the Mall blogger Megan Gambino’s piece on the Art-o-Mat, which sells you works of art out of a revamped and refurbished cigarette machines.

Wine glasses, image courtesy of Flickr user smaku

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending a “One-Hour Wine Expert” seminar at Lake Placid’s Mirror Lake Inn with Kevin Zraly, author of the best-selling Windows on the World Complete Wine Course and the 2011 recipient of the James Beard Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. I don’t know if the seminar turned me into a wine expert, but I did learn a few things and was thoroughly entertained in the process.

Zraly was the wine director at the Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the World Trade Center that, before it was destroyed in the terrorist attack of 2001, sold more wine than any other establishment in the country. Since then he’s been focused on wine education as a roving connoisseur, raconteur and probably some other French nouns. But his high-energy presentation is purely American, delivered with equal parts Jay Leno–style witty audience banter and Tony Robbins zeal (there was even some tongue-in-cheek “what-your-favorite-wine-says-about-you” analysis).

Zraly shared some interesting tidbits about American wine consumption and how it’s changed over his four decades in the business. “This is the golden age of wine,” he said, explaining that there is more good, affordable wine available now than at any time in history. And we’re drinking a lot more than we used to. In the 1970s, the domestic wine industry had yet to really take off, and Americans were far behind Europeans in their wine consumption. In 2010 the United States overtook France as the world’s biggest consumer of wine, according to a recent report from Gomberg, Fredrikson & Associates.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we are the largest per capita consumers of wine—not by a long shot. That distinction goes to the Vatican city-state, followed by Luxembourg, according to the Wine Institute’s latest report, from 2009. Zraly noted that 40 percent of Americans don’t drink any alcohol at all, and many more prefer beer or spirits.

But those of us who do drink wine are quaffing it in larger quantities, and in ways that surprise and possibly dismay traditionalists, i.e. frequently without food. The practice of pairing wine and food comes from centuries of European tradition, where wine is an essential component of leisurely meals. That lifestyle doesn’t exist for most people in the United States. Earlier this week the New York Times wine critic Sam Sifton Eric Asimov wrote about a recent survey of 800 Americans who drink wine frequently; it found that only 46 percent of the wine they drank was consumed with a meal. The rest was paired either with snacks like nuts and crackers, or without food at all. Sifton, Asimov, who wrote that he considers wine “a grocery item” (despite the fact that New York law prohibits wine sales in grocery stores), added that he found “the idea of divorcing food and wine unsettling, to say the least.”

Personally, I’m not surprised by the survey results, because those percentages correlate almost exactly with my own wine consumption; I like a glass with dinner, but I will just as frequently drink it in place of a cocktail at a party or to unwind after work. I’m admittedly no wine expert—even after an hour with Zraly—but I imagine the industry doesn’t care how people are drinking their product, as long as they’re drinking more of it.

Pot from Cyprus. Courtesy of NMNH

A question for the end of the  year, a time to look back: What’s the oldest kind of wine still in modern production?

If you answered “Commandaria,” I’m impressed. I had never heard of such wines until a few weeks ago, when I attended a Smithsonian Resident Associates lecture about the cuisine of Cyprus. It’s a sweet dessert wine, with a dark amber to light brown color, and an intriguing taste that starts like honeyed raisins and figs and ends like coffee. It reminded me somewhat of Hungarian Tokaji wine, while the woman next to me said she found it pleasantly similar to Portuguese Madeira.

I learned that Commandaria’s history dates back at least 3,000 years, although it was called Mana for much of that time. The ancient Greeks drank it at festivals celebrating Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who, according to myth, was born from the sea foam on the shores of Cyprus. The wine’s modern name can be traced to the 12th and 13th centuries, when the Knights Templar and Knights of St. John established a headquarters (commandery) in the growing region and began to produce and export the wine commercially. Commandaria proved so popular with European palates that it is said to have been served at King Richard the Lionheart’s wedding, and to have won what was perhaps the world’s first wine-tasting competition in France.

Commandaria is made from two kinds of native grapes which I’d also never heard of before—white Xynisteri and red Mavro—which are partially dried in the sun to concentrate the juices before pressing and fermentation. By law, Commandaria wines must be aged for at least two years in oak barrels, but many of the best are aged for a decade or more. (I sampled a phenomenal 30-year-old vintage, Etko Centurion, although at $100 and up a bottle I don’t expect I’ll drink it again. But younger versions are also excellent, and much more affordable at around $20.)

Although its international popularity faded in the centuries after the knights lost power, Commandaria has been staging a comeback in recent decades. The name has been given “protected designation of origin status” in the European Union, the United States and Canada, and there is an official Commandaria wine region in southern Cyprus.

To learn more about the history of Cyprus, currently the subject of an exhibit at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, read this Smithsonian magazine piece.

The vinters at Channing Daughters press this year's ramato harvest. Photo courtesy of the vineyard

Some people prefer red wine. Some swear by white. A few like rosé. Personally, I like ‘em all (or at least some kinds of each color). And I just discovered another color to add to my wine palette: orange.

So-called orange wine is not made from oranges (although, apparently, some people do make such a thing). It is the name frequently used to describe white wines in which the macerated grapes are allowed to have contact with the skins during part of the fermentation process. Although this was once, centuries ago, common practice in Europe, it fell out of favor in the 20th century. But in the past few years some adventurous winemakers—with a concentration in the Friuli region of Italy, near the Slovenian border—have been experimenting with orange wines.

So, how is orange wine different from rosé wine? Standard winemaking practice is that red wines are made from red or purple grapes (e.g. pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, merlot), with the skins left on during fermentation. White wines are usually made with white grapes (Chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, riesling), although they can also be made with red grapes with the skins removed (one example is Champagne, which often uses a blend of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier). Rosé is generally made with red grapes with the skins are left on for only part of the time.

Orange wines are made the same way as reds or rosés—allowing some skin contact—but since they use white grapes, the skins only color the wine a little, ranging from a light amber to a deep copper. But they also add tannins, the compounds normally associated with red wines that give it a slight bitterness and structure. The wine editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, Jon Bonné, wrote a good article on orange wines last year, including a history of the “mini-movement.”

I got my first taste of an orange wine last week, when I attended part of the Food & Wine Weekend at Lake Placid Lodge, an upscale Adirondack hotel. One of the sessions was a New York wine tasting with Channing Daughters winery of Long Island and Hermann J. Wiemer, from the Finger Lakes region. Channing Daughters is one of only a handful of wineries in the United States experimenting with orange wines. We tasted Envelope (so named because they are pushing it, explained the winemaker, James Christopher Tracy), a blend of Chardonnay, Gewurtztraminer and Malvasia bianca grapes.

It was nothing like any other wine I’ve tasted—aromatic, almost floral, fairly dry, with none of the acidic zing that many white wines have. I’m not a very practiced taster, but I thought I noticed a little of a citrus-rind flavor. According to the winery’s description, there are notes of “quince paste, apples, brown spice, roses, lychee, guava and dried papaya.” Tracy said the wines pair especially well with earthy fall foods.

Judging by the reaction in the room, orange wines can be polarizing. But I found the one I tasted intriguing—not something I’d want all the time, but every once in a while. I’d be interested in trying others. Since they are still relatively uncommon, though, it may be a while before I cross paths with an orange wine again.

I bet I can read your mind: Malbec?

That’s the first thing I think of, and the first thing I see in wine store displays these days. There’s a reason for that: It’s consistently good, and often a bargain. Argentine malbec is my go-to red wine in the $8 to $15 range, and although I like some bottles more than others, I’ve never encountered one I truly disliked. The best ones are rich and smooth, full of dark fruit flavors livened by a peppery zing.

Cover of Vino Argentino, a new book about the Argentine wine industry by Laura Catena.

But did you know malbec is originally French? The malbec grape was once a backbone of Bordeaux blends and is still grown widely in France’s Cahors region. It’s a fairly recent immigrant to Argentina, where other wine varietals (mainly criolla) have been cultivated since the 1500s.

According to Vino Argentino, a new book by Laura Catena, malbec was introduced to Argentina in 1853, when the government hired a French agronomist named Michel Aime Pouget to establish a vine nursery in Mendoza. He brought cuttings of several French varietals, including malbec, which thrived in the semi-arid, high-altitude vineyards.

Not long after that, malbec was hit hard on its home turf by a phylloxera epidemic. Catena writes:

Some 6.2 million acres (2.5 million hectares) of vines in France were destroyed by the disease, caused by an aphid-like insect, from 1875 to 1879. At the same time, in Argentina…Malbec was being propagated through the province of Mendoza by new immigrants from Italy and Spain. The dry climate and sandy soils in Mendoza inhibited the propagation of phylloxera, and Malbec plants are almost never affected here. The grape ripens beautifully.

Though beloved domestically, it took more than a century after that for Argentine malbec to gain international renown. I can remember when I first tasted it—only two years ago, in 2008, which is roughly when its popularity seemed to explode in the American mainstream. That’s due in part to economic factors, but it’s also due to a lot of hard work in recent decades by Argentine winemakers and promoters, including Catena and her family.

Catena’s father, Nicolas Catena, was born into the wine business—his Italian-immigrant father had been making malbec in Mendoza since the 190os—but he was troubled by the turn the country’s wine industry took during the financially turbulent 1970s. Price seemed poised to trump quality.

In the early 1980s, Nicolas Catena spent time in Berkeley as a visiting professor and was inspired by the exciting developments in the California wine industry at the time. Napa Valley winemakers were still glowing from their victory in the Judgment of Paris tasting, and maverick geniuses like Randall Grahm were just getting started.

As Laura Catena writes, her father returned to Argentina “obsessed with the quest for quality.” He spent much of the next decade studying the soils and microclimates of Mendoza, consulting the experts and developing a rigorous winemaking methodology. By the mid-1990s, Catena wines were garnering critical praise from the likes of Robert Parker, and foreign wine luminaries like Michel Rolland were dabbling in Argentine vineyards. International investors took heed. The U.S. mainstream, however, was still largely oblivious.

“I can remember when I was first selling Argentine wine and no one had ever heard of it,” Laura Catena said at a panel discussion organized by the Smithsonian Latino Center earlier this month. “Now, selling malbec seems so easy.”

She attributes this in part to the devaluation of the Argentine peso in 2002, which made the wines much cheaper on the international market, and thus more attractive to importers in the United States, Canada and Britain. Consumers were drawn in by the price, then hooked by the quality. Between 2001 and 2005, Argentina’s global wine exports doubled in value to $300 million, and had nearly doubled again to $553 million by 2009.

By now, malbec and Argentina have become so closely linked in the public’s perception that the grape’s heritage is all but forgotten. France seems to know it, says Washington Post wine writer Dave McIntyre, who spotted this slogan on a booth representing malbec’s homeland at an international wine expo last year: “Try Cahors—The French Malbec.”

Of course, as that Smithsonian panel featuring Catena, McIntyre and others emphasized, there’s also much “more than malbec” to Argentine wine. There’s also bonarda, a bright, often earthy red, and torrontes, a wonderfully fragrant white, along with better-known varietals like syrah and merlot. Even cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay, the proverbial king and queen of the wine world, have been persuaded to rule there.

There’s more than Mendoza, too—although that region accounts for some three-fourths of the country’s total production, it’s just one of seven main wine regions in Argentina. I was intrigued to learn that grapes can even prosper in the distant deserts of Patagonia, in the regions of Neuquen and Rio Negro. (At the tasting after the lecture, I especially liked a red from the aptly-named Bodega del fin del Mundo, which means “winery at the end of the world,” in Neuquen.)

When the panel’s moderator, Argentine wine promoter Nora Favelukes, asked if anyone had ever tasted a wine from Argentina, nearly everyone in the packed auditorium raised a hand.

“Twenty-something years ago, had we asked a big room like this…we might have seen only two or three hands,” Catena said. “That really touches my heart.”

My aunt, who lives nearby, had made reservations for us at a charming four-room B&B called the Clifton House Inn. She mentioned that the place doubled as a “micro-winery” called Aspen Peak Cellars, but I wasn’t too sure what that meant.

A bottle of their Conifer Red—a simple, pleasant blend of half Sangiovese and half Cabernet Sauvignon that tasted like sweet berries—welcomed us when we reached our room late the first night. In the morning, the view from our front balcony revealed only mountains and a meadow flickering with the movements of finches, hummingbirds, jays and a single grazing horse. No sign of vineyards or winemaking facilities.

Bottling in progress at the Aspen Peak Cellars micro-winery, housed in the Clifton House Inn in Conifer, CO

Turns out, that’s because they don’t have any. Marcel and Julie Flukiger, the couple who own the place, don’t want to run a huge winery. They’ve got enough on their hands running an inn and bistro. As Marcel explains, winemaking started as a hobby and had grown into an obsession by the time they bought the inn last year.

“I got Julie a winemaking kit for Christmas about five years ago, and we just couldn’t seem to stop playing with it. There was never a carboy empty in our house after that,”  he says, wearing a T-shirt that reads “Cork Dork.”

They buy grape concentrate from vineyards in California—selected after some sampling at trade shows—and ferment it for about two weeks in plastic vats stored in an annex of the inn’s kitchen. Then the wines are aged for three to six months in American oak barrels, which are half the size of traditional ones, because of space constraints.

When wines are ready to bottle, as they were on the morning we departed, one of the dining room tables gets temporarily re-purposed as an assembly line. I watched as the Flukigers, their friends and even a few random volunteers (two of the men said they’d just come for brunch at the bistro the day before and thought coming back to help with bottling sounded fun!) operated the hoses, filling, corking and labeling equipment by hand.

Every time a case of 12 was complete, Marcel carried it away…at least, about 15 feet away. The walls of the inn’s small kitchen were lined with cardboard boxes of wine.

“This is pretty much it for storage,” he said with a sheepish shrug. “It’s not a big place.”

Aspen Peak Cellars made about 1,000 cases in its first season, which ended in June. The Flukigers hope to incorporate some Colorad0-grown grapes in future seasons—there weren’t any surpluses available to buy this year, due to drought—and have started experimenting with adding skins to create more tannic reds, Marcel said.

“We didn’t go to college for winemaking,” he’s quick to point out. “We’re both chefs. So for us, it’s the food pairing that’s important. We want to make fun table wines, and make a menu to match those wines.”

So far, he said, at least 95 percent of people who have tasted the wines reacted favorably.

“Then, of course, you have the ‘wine snobs,’” he said. “We’ll make something for them in the future.”

Winemaker Randall Grahm. Photo by Alex Krause.

“It’s time for us in California to start taking seriously the notion of terroir,” Grahm said, defining it as “the precise opposite of nowhereness.” A vin de’terroir (wine of place) has distinct characteristics connected to the particular soil, climate, weather, history, farming practices and even the admittedly nebulous “essence”  of the vineyard where it was born.

Grahm believes modern American culture suffers from “brand sickness,” meaning that names, labels and logos have become more important than the actual products they represent. We’ve been so distracted by signifiers that we’ve lost track of real significance.

I see his point; haven’t you ever walked into a wine store and grabbed whichever bottle is the right price—or the highest-scored by critics, or adorned with the wittiest pun or cutest animal on its label—without even caring to ask where and how it was made? I admit, I’ve done it more than once.

Respecting good terroir as a winemaker, Grahm explained, means not manipulating a vineyard or its grapes too much—and not needing to. If a winemaker needs to make “heroic interventions” in order to produce a palatable wine, it probably speaks to a problem with the terroir they have chosen, Grahm said. (Or, to quote an old joke—what did the doctor tell the patient who said he’d broken his leg in three places? “Well, stay out of those three places!”)

In recent years Grahm has also become interested in biodynamic farming, which he defines as “agriculture with a very light hand, never making gross changes in soil quality…having an empathy with one’s site,” and keeping future generations in mind rather than focusing on immediate gain. It includes quirky practices like burying cow horns full of manure in the soil (“Totally mysterious, but it works,” he says) and paying attention to lunar cycles and “life forces.” (A review of research (pdf) on biodynamic farming concludes that, although the practice doesn’t appear to be harmful, it is “a vista of starry eyes and good intentions mixed with quasi-religious hocus-pocus, good salesmanship, and plain scientific illiteracy.”) True to his reputation, though, Grahm doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.

“I believe technologically speaking, we’ve reached sort of a glass ceiling in winemaking,” he said, explaining that he finds that boring because it means most winemakers can produce essentially flawless, sure-to-score-high wines—and most of them do, preferring stable profit margins over the gamble of inventing something truly unique.

“A technically perfect wine may be likable, but it’s hardly lovable,” Grahm argued. “A wine of terroir speaks with openness and candor…and an esteem for terroir makes us look at our land, and our custodianship of it, with deep respect and love.”

I thought about this as I sipped some of Grahm’s 2005 Le Cigare Volant, a rubied blend of mostly Grenache, Mourvedre and Syrah whose rather silly name belies its elegance. I wondered whether it tasted particularly of California’s Central Coast, where I’ve never been. To me, instead it evoked places I have been: A pub in the basement of a Salzburg castle. The rooftop of a former apartment. An island campground in the Adirondacks. A commune in rural France. The fireplace of an old Vermont inn. A particular patch of sun-dappled grass.

In other words, places where I have experienced joy and beauty. That’s not terroir, exactly, but it is darn good wine.

I ran into Grahm again the next night, as he and other American “Rhone Rangers” poured their wines at a Smithsonian reception celebrating sustainable seafood. I asked if he felt that the Le Cigare Volant was a good example of terroir and/or a biodynamic wine. He said no, because it’s made with grapes from several different vineyards that were cultivated with a mix of practices.

Well then, I asked, which of his wines is the best example of those concepts?

Above his owlish eyeglasses, Grahm’s brows jumped and then furrowed.

“Dammit! None of them!” he said, laughing at himself. “It’s more of an aspirational thing for me right now. I mean, biodynamic farming and terroir are really cool, and you can make some really good wine that way. But it’s not the only way to make good wine.”