{"id":1758,"date":"2021-01-28T17:35:22","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T17:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1758"},"modified":"2021-01-28T19:43:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T19:43:00","slug":"lunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1758","title":{"rendered":"Lunch"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you are out wine-tasting, lunch is a necessity.\u00a0 Don\u2019t even think of sipping wine on an empty stomach.\u00a0 Breakfast is important too, but the morning meal does not lend itself to lazy luxuriating quite as much as does lunch.\u00a0 One thing that almost all wine-making regions have in common is the availability of superb cuisine.\u00a0 Why travel all that way to Wine Country and deny yourself the pleasure of a leisurely meal at midday?<\/p>\n

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Caff\u00e9s in Montalcino.<\/em><\/p>\n

In Europe, you have no choice.\u00a0 On that enlightened continent, a two-hour work stoppage is de rigeur<\/em>, as they say over there.\u00a0 So you pull into a town or stop at a French caf\u00e9 (or an Italian caff\u00e9) surrounded by vines and do like the locals do.\u00a0 We can\u2019t open a bottle of Brunello without thinking of warm afternoons on the piazzas of Montalcino<\/a>.\u00a0 The same goes for St. Emilion, Greve in Chianti and Chateauneuf de Pape.<\/p>\n

When visiting California\u2019s sections of Wine Country, you have the option to gulp down a Big Mac and keep on tasting.\u00a0 We Americans are all go-go-go and that does have some business advantage.\u00a0 But if you are on a wine tasting trip, you\u2019re not there on business (unless you\u2019re a distributor).\u00a0 Just because you can try three wineries between noon and 2:00 doesn\u2019t mean that you should.\u00a0 Not when the bistros of Calistoga, Healdsburg<\/a>, Paso Robles or Santa Barbara are calling out to you.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all a matter of attitude. \u00a0If you just happen to be passing through and you only have a little while available to you, then eat something quickly and then stop by at a winery or two.\u00a0 But have you ever just happened to be passing through Yountville?\u00a0 Or Pauillac?<\/p>\n

Another argument is that wine tasting should be about wine and a fancy lunch is just an unnecessary use of your mouth.\u00a0 If your objective is just to taste as much wine as you can in as short a time as possible \u2013 a highly dangerous goal \u2013 you\u2019re better off picking up a few bottles at the store and staying home.\u00a0 For us, at any rate, a large part of the reason to go wine tasting is to be in<\/em> Wine Country, to soak it all in (not just drink it all in).\u00a0 And that means eating lunch where the locals go.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of the (San Jose) Mercury News.<\/em><\/p>\n

You\u2019ll never dine anywhere where there are no tourists, but there are many places where you can sit with people from the neighborhood and from the wineries.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean white tablecloths and fine fare.\u00a0 For example, if you\u2019re tasting in St. Helena, there are few places that scream WINE COUNTRY like the original Gott\u2019s Roadside.\u00a0 Oh, there are all the attributes of the fancy places, such as locavore purveyors and Ahi tuna, but at the end of the day, it\u2019s about the burgers.\u00a0 And if you want some wine, Joel Gott makes that too.<\/p>\n

The point is that you should make a good lunch a part of your wine tasting adventure, not a diversion from it.\u00a0 Be careful how much you drink with lunch if you\u2019re going to keep tasting all afternoon, but remember wine was made to go with food.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you are out wine-tasting, lunch is a necessity.\u00a0 Don\u2019t even think of sipping wine on an empty stomach.\u00a0 Breakfast is important too, but the morning meal does not lend itself to lazy luxuriating quite as much as does lunch.\u00a0 One thing that almost all wine-making regions have in common is the availability of superb … Continue reading Lunch<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1761,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions\/1761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}