Randy Caparoso

(Revision of blog originally posted in November 2007) What is umami and why is everyone talking about it? I mean, aren't foods and wines complicated enough? When I think of many of the natural food and beverage combinations I've enjoyed in my life –…

(Blind tastings)... seem such tomfoolery... Such tasting conditions have nothing to do with the conditions under which the wines will presumably be drunk, which is at the table, with food. When a woman chooses a hat, she does not put it on a goat's…

The Gastronomic Grape TAPAS – Tempranillo Advocates Producers & Amigos Society – is turning out to be a very good thing for the wine business. Especially for those of us coming at it from food backgrounds. Notwithstanding the many Spanish imports…

Syn•chro•nic•ity: the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance and that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner (see Carl Gustav Jung). Despite what Miles, that…

Lodi's ZinFest Wine Festival last May 2011 was a good excuse to talk about one of my favorite subjects: the underrated joys of Zinfandel and cheese matching. The seminar was called Lodi Wine is Cheese Central Friendly, and it involved four different…

Who doesn’t associate summer with barbecue? It’s an American thing, but you might also consider it a return to primitive instincts; reminding me of one of Woody Allen’s classic quips about food in general: “Why does man kill? He kills for food. And…

What are your favorite eating and drinking songs? There must be a million of them; but then again, not. But these days the vast library in the internet sky allows you put your favorites all together in once place, making for one, big musical food,…

Real Men Drink Rosé is the the title of the latest post on Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant's Inspiring Thirst blog. Yes, indeed they do; especially the dry, minerally charged rosés (the opposite of tutti-fruity) imported by this iconic Berkeley importer.…

In the mid-eighties Paul Prudhomme’s blackened redfish permanently entered the vocabulary of average American restaurant-goers; but since then, you can argue that it is variations of blackened tuna that have become more ubiquitous in restaurants,…

The author in Freestone Vineyard (with Philippe Pessereau, viticultural manager), March 2010 When you taste 200-plus pinot noirs, as I did during the two weeks before, during and after my recent attendance at the tenth annual World of Pinot Noir in…

During the years that James Beard Award winning Chef Roy Yamaguchi and I worked together in our Roy’s restaurants (from late 1988 to 2001), composing dishes for specific wines became, for us, a kata-like discipline; and admittedly, we often combined…

It's that time of year again: to ruminate on wines and turkeys. From the perspective of undoubtedly many a wine professional – spending Thanksgivings at tables with as many as a dozen different bottles of wine at a time (the most ever for me: some…

In Italy, it's often said, wine has always been a food, not necessarily something you drink. The gastronomy itself is very regional, much of it as old as the hills, and probably even more of it as stylish or innovative as anything the Italians do.…

Let’s talk chicken and wine matches. But why? The way I see it: I learned long ago that ordering chicken in every restaurant gives you a pretty good idea of how good, bad, or detail oriented every restaurant's chef is. I know why, as a result, Blue…

The concept, red wine with fish, is now as firmly entrenched in culinary phraseology as red wine with meat and white wine with fish. Exactly how does this work, and why? To get a handle on this, you need to go back to the basic methodology first…

Some curious, yet totally sensible, thoughts concerning why certain foods, and food and wine combinations, always seem to be so "right" for us once occurred to me when I reading about the period of Shojin Ryori in late 19th century Japan. Influenced…

One thing we know about California’s zinfandel: it is a far, far more food versatile wine than usually assumed. But it wasn’t always like that. A couple of decades ago the country was still awash with pink colored “white zinfandel”; and focusing on…

Oh, mama, can this really be the end? Thank you, Mr. Dylan, for your prophetic line. I absolutely adore Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee: historic epicenter of the blues, place of birth and final rest of Elvis, and once my temporary home. I could…

SAUVIGNON BLANC vs. RIESLING Although I do not fear low acid wines for food, there’s a lot to be said for crisply balanced, elevated acidity natural to varieties like sauvignon blanc and riesling. In the mid-nineties I invited Peter Merriman, one of…

Oh, to be blissfully unimpeded by thought or effort when matching wine with food. There’s nothing wrong with the “drink-whatever-you-like” approach when it comes to that. Not much different than eating: whenever you’re hungry, just open up a favorite…