Thirty years ago at a trattoria on the isle of Capri, Bill Ward had a lusty homemade red that rocked his world. Ever since this "so that's what wine's all about" moment, he has been seeking similar experiences, always aiming to approach wine with an innocent eye. He's been writing about travel, food and wine for more than a decade and won a James Beard Award in 2004 for a series on Italian regional cuisine. His column, Liquid Assets, runs every Thursday in Taste.
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Hoppin' Jon
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DiggHaving built a marvelous and astonishingly affordable wine list at Chiang Mai Thai, Jon Provenzano had a new world to conquer.
Enter Ginger Hop, the new Nordeast restaurant where Provenzano is an owner/operator, not to mention beverage guru. I talked to him for last week's Liquid Assets, and several interesting thoughts didn't make it into our limited print-edition space. So here they be:
*"I’m kinda feeding off what I did ay Chiang Mai Thai. We had great success with an extensive list that was reachable and affordable. Here we have a little less emphasis on the reds and more on the whites. At Chiang Mai I went a little more crazy with the big cabs."
*"I purposely put chardonnay and cabernet at the bottom of the list because people tend to look at the top and middle. It’s like in a grocery store, they put Campbell’s Soup at eye level, and what soup are you gonna buy? Campbell’s."
*"We’re learning from our customers as well as our distributors about beer. If you listen to them you can learn just as much as from the distributors, no offense to the distributors."
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