Subject: Dave Nelson

• The Noble Writ: Giving Cava Some Credit

  I'm not so crazy about Champagne. By Champagne, I don't mean sparkling wine in general or a $6 bottle of Cook's from California. I mean proper Champagne, the great sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France.During production, much Champagne is aged in its bottle with yeast for several years prior to release. This extended interaction with yeast gives Champagne a range of flavors that many people find compelling and record positively as toasty, yeasty, nutty or freshly-baked bread. But th

  June 2, 2009

• St. Louis Food Blog Digest: 2.7-2.13

  Gut Check dishes on our favorite St. Louis food blogs.Beer, Wine and Whisky is a blog that I've neglected to add to the digest for far too long. You need to check it out -- and not only because, beginning next week, author Dave Nelson will be blogging about wine for Gut Check!FamilyStyle Food: Karen offers a recipe for slow-cooked pork with rosemary and white beans.Iron Stef: Stef applies the Facebook 25-random-things meme to herself and food.

  February 13, 2009

• The Week in Gut Check

  Zach Dyer It was a busy week here at Gut Check International Headquarters: Zach Dyer showed us the person behind the coffee, while Dave Nelson tried to convince those who hate chardonnay that the grape isn't all bad.I heard from the Corn Refiners Association -- and gave it right back to 'em -- while Dara Strickland's latest sneak prompted a few choice comments.Robin Wheeler found dive-bar nirvana at Slo-Tom's, but the Swag Bag wasn't as impressed with hemp-oil salad dressing or Hangover Fix Stri

  March 6, 2009

• St. Louis Food Blog Digest: 3.21-3.27

  Gut Check dishes on our favorite St. Louis food blogs.A Veggie Venture: Alanna has a springtime recipe for asparagus and scallion salad.Bruno's Dream: Speaking of spring and asparagus, let's check in on Bruno's garden.St. Louis Eats & Drinks: The Pollacks visit Forest Park Southeast's Mia Rosa.STL Hops: Gut Check's Noble Writ, Dave Nelson, guest- posts a description of dark American lager.Mostly Soup: A recipe for spicy Asian noodle soup.Off the Menu: Joe Bonwich has the news on this year'

  March 27, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Do Try This at Home

  Dave Nelson is the author of the blog Beer, Wine and Whisky. He writes about wine for Gut Check every Tuesday.Aging wine at home is something everyone should attempt. You don't need a cellar. In fact, I hesitate to use the term "cellar" because it carries so many preconceptions. People tend to think of the dusty dungeon-esque catacombs beneath a stately European manse or the large, expensive wine fridges that populate the ads of wine magazines. Both images are misleading. Aging wine doesn't req

  April 14, 2009

• Branching Out

  Waterloo plays a CD release party for Out of the Woods; plus, a sneak peek at the new and improved Creepy Crawl

  June 28, 2006

• FoodWire: Fair Shares Spots Still Available

  Thanks to our very own Noble Writ, Dave Nelson, for passing along this info: local CSA Fair Shares still has a few spots open for its new season. Joining a CSA is a great way to support local agriculture and feed your family healthy, delicious food at its seasonal peak. For more info or to submit a membership application, visit the Fair Shares Web site.

  April 30, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Spanish Spring

  Dave Nelson is the author of the blog Beer, Wine and Whisky. He writes about wine for Gut Check every Tuesday.While Spain doesn't have the staggering diversity of grapes that Italy does, it's still home to some fantastically distinctive white wines. Fewer of these are imported into the United States than their Italian counterparts, but this again works in favor of high quality -- people just aren't going to waste their time bringing in the plonk.Today, we have samples of two of my favorite Span

  May 5, 2009

• Gut Check: A smorgasbord of delights awaits on Ian's blog

  May 6, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Thinking Clearly about Alternative Closures

  Dave Nelson is the author of the blog Beer, Wine and Whisky. He writes about wine for Gut Check every Tuesday.As I've researched the many issues surrounding cork and its alternatives, a central theme has emerged: Little solid research has been done into both the chemistry of wine aging and the impact of bottle closures on that process. While new studies seem to be announced almost weekly now, there is a paucity of historical data and controlled long-term studies. Combine this with all of the new

  May 12, 2009

• The Noble Writ: So You Want to Be a Wine Geek?

  Dave Nelson is the author of the blog Beer, Wine and Whisky. He writes about wine for Gut Check every Tuesday.Wine is a daunting subject: tens of thousands of producers, located in unique microclimates all around the world, each creating between one and dozens of wines, each of which is different to some degree every year due to variation in the weather. How even to begin learning about it?The breadth and depth of the topic of "wine" make knowing it intimately outside the scope of all but a few

  May 26, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Tell Me a Story

  We live in a time when well-made wine is readily available to just about everyone. You can walk into most grocery stores -- not to mention wine shops -- and find dozens of wines that are cleanly and soundly made starting at or below $5 a bottle.But I need a wine to be more than "good." A "good," technically sound wine isn't what feeds my passion. I need a wine to draw me in -- to capture my attention with something distinctive. Sure, there's a base level of quality that needs to be met, but the

  June 9, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Is the Bloom off the Kiwi?

  The wine world has seen few success stories like New Zealand sauvignon blanc. In the past decade, the country's production of sauvignon blanc has increased by 800%, and the value of all wine exported from New Zealand is set to top NZ$1 billion next year. Sauvignon blanc put New Zealand on the wine map and continues to dominate the nation's output.In addition to aggressive export, the New Zealand wine community has been at the forefront of two revolutions. First, as an industry, it committed ear

  June 16, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Vino Soave

  Remember chugging Lancer's, Mateus, Black Tower or Blue Nun in the parking lot before the Three Dog Night concert?Me neither.But I certainly hear plenty of quasi-wistful reminiscences about them. I was relatively surprised to learn that many people lumped one of my favorite white wines, Soave, in with these pop-culture laughingstocks.It seems that in a decade not too long ago Soave was the Italian white wine -- the pinot grigio of its day. As with so many things, popularity bred mediocrity as pl

  June 23, 2009

• Gut Check: Ian taps into the tasty world of St. Louis-area food bloggers

  June 24, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Wine on the Run

  From time to time I feel obligated to investigate new products I see on the market. Were I "just" a consumer, I might well pass them by, not willing to risk my hard-earned money -- but since I can at least write about such things here, I'm a bit more adventurous. A recent pre-camping trip wine run led to me to purchase several new offerings that are not packaged in glass bottles.Glass certainly has its advantages: It is inert and does not allow oxygen into the wine, which would spoil it. Howeve

  June 30, 2009

• The Best of Gut Check: The Noble Writ

  Dave Nelson is the author of the blog Beer, Wine and Whisky. He writes about wine for Gut Check every Tuesday.While Gut Check is on vacation this week, check out some of Dave's best work:Chardonnay for the Chardonnay Hater (March 3, 2009):The world produces an ocean of chardonnay. In California alone, almost 100,000 acres of this incredibly popular grape variety are planted. That's enough chardonnay to make -- using modest crop and efficiency estimates -- over 250,000,000 bottles. Add the cha

  July 7, 2009

• The Noble Writ: A Trying Time for Wine

  Like many sectors of the economy, the wine industry isn't doing well. You might suppose that alcohol sales would be more resilient than most things, and to some extent that's true -- sales of inexpensive wines remain relatively robust. However, high-end wines are being hit hard.My first clue that something was amiss? The numerous e-mails and mailings that I began receiving from wineries from which I hadn't purchased wine directly in many years, if ever.Many small domestic producers have mailing

  July 14, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Romo-ance and a Romo-rant

  This week we're going to delve into yet another virtually extinct grape variety that, in the right hands, makes absolutely delicious wine: romorantin. First, though, a bit of a rant. There are more worthy grapes out there than just cab, merlot, pinot noir and chardonnay. And, for the really adventurous drinkers out there, more than zinfandel, syrah, sauvignon blanc and riesling too!Limiting your wine experience to these superstars is like having the Crayola 64 pack, using the red, blue, green a

  July 21, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Pairing Pizza with Wine, via Piedmont

  Wait, it's pizza and beer, right? Not in my book. As someone who loves beer, pizza and wine to degrees that would probably embarrass most folks, I'm mystified how this generic "match" has become a ubiquitous populist myth.What kind of beer? What kind of pizza? What kind of wine? These are areas rife with variations and passionately-held pedantic points of honor.The most critical pizza component when deciding which beverage to pair is the sauce. Basically, any pie with a tomato-based sauce is go

  July 28, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Corkage with Class

  On the relatively few occasions when I dine at a nice restaurant, I'm usually seen carrying my "geek bag." (I have used the 820 model for almost ten years.) Inside will be three or four wines from my cellar that I am willing to pay to open pursuant to the restaurant's corkage policy.A restaurant that allows corkage permits you to bring in a bottle of your own wine and drink it on its premises for a set fee. In St. Louis, this fee usually ranges from $10 to $25, and many finer dining restaurants

  August 4, 2009

• The Noble Writ: A Riesling Primer

  Riesling is my favorite white grape variety, and if pressed, I'd probably choose it as my favorite grape overall (pinot noir being its only real competition). So it pains me that so many folks interested in wine seem to ignore it, if not deride or despise it. There are many misconceptions about riesling, and the German on many riesling labels acts as a further barrier. However, no other grape so clearly articulates where it is grown, which makes the effort not only worthwhile, but obligatory for

  August 11, 2009

• The Noble Writ: A Pair of Classics, a Classic Pair

  Matching food and wine is something that has become perilously overwrought -- almost to the point of preciousness. Articles wax poetic over the hint of Dalmatian sage that echoes the slightest grassiness of a sauvignon blanc, or over the wisdom, if not the necessity, of opting for a Cabernet from Rutherford, with its trademark earthiness, to best meld with dry-aged prime beef. The American tendency to seek "the best," has turned the simple synergistic pleasure of food and wine into a ferocious,

  August 18, 2009

• The Noble Writ: How to Decant, or What You Won't Learn at Your 20th Reunion

  I graduated from high school in 1989. No, it wasn't in St. Louis, so don't waste time wondering which one. In celebration of blowing off my 20th reunion, and being two decades removed from the trying social experiment called high school, I decided to pull a wine from the 1989 vintage for this week's post.Now, I didn't purchase this wine when it was originally released back in 1991 or so. Some wineries will cellar bottles at their facility and then release them years or even decades later. To my

  August 25, 2009

• The Noble Writ's St. Louis Grand Crus: Paul Hayden, the Wine & Cheese Place

  ​From time to time, I dedicate a post to someone doing remarkable work in the St. Louis area. In this edition, it's Paul Hayden, who has the enormous job of managing the Clayton location of the Wine & Cheese Place and buying wine (and other non-Noble Writ beverages) for the store's other locations as well as Provisions market.Hayden started with the store as a cashier at the age of eighteen and gradually worked his way up the ladder of responsibility as his passion for wine grew. Like me,

  September 1, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Are Sulfites Friend or Foe?

  One of the larger areas of misconception surrounding wine is the use of sulfur compounds, most commonly sulfur dioxide (SO2), during the wine-making process. Many consumers seem to misunderstand why most winemakers add SO2 and what ill effects it might cause. Given that all wines containing more than 10 parts per million of sulfites are required by the Food and Drug Administration to sport a deadly-serious-looking official government label that warns of their presence, it isn't surprising that m

  September 8, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Comfort Wine

  My tastes generally run to the esoteric, the obscure, the endangered and, sometimes, the downright odd. Which isn't to say I can't and don't appreciate more "mainstream" wines, because I can and do, but with so many wines available in the market, I can't resist the urge to explore.Occasionally, however, I want a sure thing. One of the wines that has served steadfastly in this role for me over the past seven vintages or so is the Les Hérétiques bottling from the Iché family at Chateau d'Oupia

  September 15, 2009

• The Noble Writ: A Port for Every Storm, Part 1

  As cool autumn weather begins to settle in, my thoughts turn to richer wines that can keep the chill away. One wine that fits this bill perfectly is port. Typically, port is imbibed while enjoying a good book at bedtime or while sitting next to the fireplace, but it makes a lovely match with cheese or nuts or even a not-too-sweet chocolate dessert.This week, I'll cover the history and production methods of port as well as the most common form you'll encounter in the market. Next week, we'll delv

  October 6, 2009

• The Noble Writ: A Port for Every Storm, Part 2

  Continuing our exploration of port from last week (read "A Port for Every Storm, Part 1"), we'll cover the other forms of port you're likely to see on the shelves. We'll also spend some time discussing what, if any, food will match well with the port in your glass.First, to finish up with the red (as opposed to tawny) ports. Let's start at the top of the qualitative ladder with vintage port. For many, vintage port represents the pinnacle of port. In volume terms, vintage port makes up a whoppin

  October 13, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Wine Shopping from Afar

  A point comes in many wine lovers' lives when they are unable to find a bottle they really want in their local wine shops. It might be a wine from the birth year of a special person, a bottle enjoyed while traveling or just something about which they've read that simply captivates their imagination.The simple fact about wine distribution is that far from everything is available in any particular market. While we St. Louisans are relatively well placed in a large metropolitan area spanning two st

  October 20, 2009

• The Noble Writ: Wine Should Be Fun

  ​Too often we forget that wine is fun. Critics are overcritical, writers try to convey too much useful information, normal people get uptight, and wine geeks have been known to manage all three simultaneously. It can be difficult to turn these qualities off, especially after years of conditioning. Sometimes, though, we need to step back, think about what we're doing and attempt to recapture the fun.I present myself as exhibit number one. A fundamental wine moment for me occurred in the fall of

  November 3, 2009

• The Noble Writ: The Truth About Wine and Thanksgiving

  ​Thanksgiving increases interest in food and wine pairings. Since I have fun experimenting with combinations of wine and food, I generally enjoy the conversations I have with friends and family looking to step out and try something different.However, a significant number of conversations I have about Thanksgiving and wine are dripping with anxiety. Much comes from people on a quixotic quest for a meal of Rockwellian nostalgia, filtered through lens of Martha Stewartesque perfection. For these

  November 10, 2009

• RFT readers weigh in matters of biblical proportions, and huff and puff about the newly passed smoking ban

  November 12, 2009

• FoodWire: Wine Tasting at Bon Vivant Wines Thursday, 11.12

  Dave NelsonInside Bon Vivant Wines in Columbia, Illinois​Bon Vivant Wines, which this here publication deemed the Best Wine Store of 2009, is celebrating its fifth anniversary with a wine tasting tomorrow, November 11, from 5-7:30 p.m. The tasting will feature wines from importer Kermit Lynch.According to the Bon Vivant website, those wines will include Dom. Salvard Cheverny '08, Dom de la Cadette Bourgogne Vezelay '07, Graville-Lacoste Graves '08, Foillard Morgon '07, Tempier Bandol Rose '08

  November 11, 2009

• The Noble Writ in the Lion's Den of California Cabs

  ​Following up on my post a couple of weeks ago about wine being fun, I decided to have some fun myself. I saw a post on the Wine and Cheese Place's blog about an upcoming tasting featuring the wines of Chateau St. Jean and Beringer. Regular readers of the Noble Writ will likely realize that these producers are outside my normal palate preferences. That we'd be tasting some high-end cabernet sauvignons from these folks moved me even further from my normal hunting grounds.

  November 17, 2009