What I Learned Inside the CIA

Meg Houston Maker
Features
11 min read
No, not that CIA—the other one, in Hyde Park, New York: the Culinary Institute of America. I’m an experienced cook. I’ve done my 10,000 hours in the kitchen, maybe even 10,000 hours chopping onions. I know about mise en place. I know how to mince a shallot. I have decent

The Accidental Leader of the Fork’s Organic Pack

Diana Combs
Feature Stories
2 min read
There are now eighteen vineyards with sustainable practices in Long Island, and Barbara Shinn is leader of the pack. Shinn is a modest woman, thin and deeply tanned, with dirty blonde, shoulder length hair. She probably never intended to be a groundbreaker (pun intended) for Long Island vineyard farming.  In

Cognac chills out

Michelle Locke
Features
4 min read
Producers of the French digestif are blending in with the cocktail crowd Flanked by barrels of gently slumbering brandy, Jerome Royer is talking about cognac — his passion and his business — with all the gallant gestures and mustachioed enthusiasm of a Frenchman straight out of Central Casting. But what he has

W. Blake Gray, Online Wine Columnist of the Year, and More

David Honig
Features
1 min read
Congratulations to Palate Press' own W. Blake Gray, winner of the prestigious Ramos Pinto Online Wine Columnist of the Year, in the 2013 Louis Roederer Wine Writers' Awards. Blake, a Columnist for Palate Press since 2010, was nominated for stories like Darth Vader is My Lover: Revalations about Brettanomyces in

Mexico’s Wine Woes: Attempting Water Into Wine

Michael Cervin
Feature Stories
6 min read
Beer and tequila are the traditional alcoholic beverages of Mexico. But the wine region of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula is changing dramatically, receiving many high scores from the American wine press, and a new breed of winemaker there is dedicated to producing premium wine. But the Mexican wine industry faces uphill