Something I like with wine is a spread I make with equal parts gorgonzola and marscapone cheese, with added toasted walnuts or hazelnuts. This is fantastic spread on crusty whole grain sourdough bread, and with many kinds of wine. Is also nice to add sliced pears. I also like smoky eggplant dip which is made by roasting an eggplant and then peeling it and putting it in the food processor with a small jar of roasted red peppers. That goes good on bread too, and with wine. You can doll it up with whatever other italian condiments you like, but it is good plain too. I also have served Chase's homeade boursin to raves. Since I have an herb garden it is a fun summer thing to serve with bread and wine. Home Made Boursin with Herbs 1 lb Farmers cheese or 1/2 lb cottage cheese & 1/2 lb Ricotta 8 ounces cream cheese 1/2 cup butter,softened 4 large garlic cloves,minced 2 medium shallots,minced 1/2 cup fresh parsley,chopped finely and packed tight 1/2 cup chopped fresh thyme OR 2/3 cup fresh dill chopped finely 1/3 cup chives,chopped finely 1 tsp pepper,freshly ground 1/4 tsp cayenne Blend the cheeses and butter, add the remaining ingredients. Mix thoroughly. Store in small crocks or ramekins in the fridge until well chilled.

Although it's widely known and accepted that Midwesterners are, always have been and always will be hicks, and darned proud of it, food and its history also depends on the population and what is available. Detroit was founded by the French, and so cooking was very much influenced by that in the 1700-1800s and that style of cooking was popular and common in Michigan. Food in the cities was far removed from that the pioneers subsisted on, which by nature had to be made from ingredients that were portable and could be stored long term as refrigeration was not available and transportation of foodstuffs was inconvenient. The railroads in the 1800s made food more portable and so more variety became available. I got this from "food timeline", and the Occidental Saloon in Tombstone certainly was going "upscale", LOL. "Sudden wealth from gold and silver brought sudden change. It came earliest in California. Bayard Taylor reported in 1850 "it was no unusual thing to see a company of these men, who had never before thought of luxury beyond a good beefsteak and glass of whiskey, drinking their champagne at ten dollars a bottle, and eating their tongue and sardines, or warming in the smoky campfire their tin cannisters of turtle soup and lobster salad."...Teddy Blue, a Montana cowboy during the 1880s when the cattle trade flourished, wrote: 'talking about food, do you know what was the first thing a cowpuncher ordered to eat when he got to town? Oysters and celery. And eggs. Those things were what he didn't get and what he was crazy for.'...It was not only oysters that, with the coming of the railroads, suddenly became avaialble in Sheridan, Wyoming, in Miles City, Montana, or Virginia City, Nevada. Gambling and concert saloons as well as hotel bars offered their well-heeled customers fancy fare printed on equally fancy menus, often in broken French... "In Wyatt Earp's and Doc Holliday's Tombstone, the Occidental Saloon served a Sunday dinner to tickle "Doc's" fashionable palate: Soups Chicken Giblet and Consumme, with Egg Fish Columbia River Salmon, au Beurre Noir Relieves Filet a Boeuf, a la Financier Leg of Lamb, Sauce, Oysters Cold Meats Loin of Beef, Loin of Ham, Loin of Pork, Westphalia Ham, Corned Beef, Imported Lunches Boiled Meats Leg of Mutton, Ribs of Beef, Corned Beef and Cabbage, Russian River Bacon Entrees Pinons a Poulett, aux Champignons Cream Fricasse of Chicken, Asparagus Points,br> Lapine Domestique, a la Matire d'Hote Casserole d'Ritz aux Oeufs, a la Chinoise Ducks of Mutton, Braze, with Chipoluta Ragout California Fresh Peach, a la Conde Roasts Loin of Beef, Loin of Mutton, Leg of Pork Apple Sauce, Suckling Pig, with Jelly, Chicken Stuffed Veal Pastry Peach, Apple, Plum, and Custard Pies English Plum Pudding, Hard Sauce, Lemon Flavor And we will have it or perish. This dinner will be served for 50 cents." And so it appears that nearly anything can be Americana. I guess, though, that peanut butter might not be since it was not common until the 1880s or so, so scratch the peanut butter and jelly and replace it with Casserole d'Ritz aux Oeufs, a la Chinoise and Suckling Pig! Or hardtack and pemmican, your choice. Annie

After you taste lots of wine you will know the answer. The reason I suggested lighter fruiter wines is because my experience shows that most people prefer those initially. If you want to age the wine, that is an entirely different issue and not something you are going to do without knowing a thing about wine! So to your question - the region is what some people hold to be most important. Others disagree. The French have a word - terroir, that doesn't perfectly translate but it cna be understood as the microclimate - the slope of a hillside, whether the sun reflects from a nearby river, the type of soil, the fact that the trees at the top prevent the cold winds from coming down, etc. That is why some winemakers prefer grapes from one vineyard or one section of a vineyard to another. Throughout the world there are many sites where wine can be made. But in Napa for example, some people like to be high on a mountain, say Howell Mountain, while others are in the valley and others are on slight slopes in Rutherford. The soil types vary, the fog effects vary, the winds vary, etc. In the Mosel in Germany for example, the area is cold but the Rhine river reflects sunlight on to the steep hills and the vineyards are a few degress warmer than they might otherwise be. That really matters. So the gross regions (Napa, Bordeaux, Long Island, Rioja) matter and so do the smaller subregions within those areas. And they matter for more reasons than those I just mentioned. In some countries, the law dictates what grapes can be grown in certain areas. So in Rioja in Spain for example, you will find tempranillo, some garnacha, some manzuelo, and some cabernet sauvignon, although not too much. In Napa on the other hand, you will find almost no tempranillo, very little garnacha, probably no manzuelo, and a whole lot of cabernet sauvignon. These grapes produce very different wines. In Napa they can grow whatever they want, in Rioja, they cannot, at least if they want to sell the wine as a Rioja crianza, reserva, or gran reserva. They would not be allowed, for example, to plant zinfandel. In addition, there are aging and vinification requirements in many areas. Germany for example, might require that certain grapes be picked at a certain time if they are to be made into a Spatlese. In Australia, they pick whenever they want. Spain dictates how long a wine must sit in wood and in bottle before release. Argentina for example, does not. In general, the European countries are more restrictive. They limit the choices to certain grapes in certain areas. How zinfandel would do in Piedmonte, for example, is an existential question because I doubt that it will ever be planted there. As a result, things like the country, the region within the country, the producer, the winemaker (who may be hired by the wine producer), the vintage (year the wine was made), the varietal, and a hoste of other factors really make a difference! So far from not mattering, all of these things matter a whole lot. Back to your choices. You don't like the "bite". I agree with the poster who suggested that you are probably referring to tannins. So go with a wine having fewer tannins. That is why I suggested a cru Beaujolais. Or a young, sometimes called "joven" Spanish wine. Or a wine from the Barossa valley in Australia. Or a wine from Mendoza in Argentina. All of them produce examples for under $20 or even under $15 that should be good choices. If you want to try something aged, you will need to spend a little more. That will be an entirely different experience and you will need to find a store that can source these wines or buy them at auction or from private parties. There are a few places that sell some older wines - Lopez de Heredia, for example, is a Spanish producer that is perhaps one of the most traditional in the world. They have released 1964 and 1973 vintage wines from their winery. They are NOT going to be like the others I recommended. In addition, they will be about $250 or so. Best of luck.

Allison - wine mentor? What a cool job that would be. I don't know. I've been drinking wine for years and ask questions all the time. Now that I'm selling it I end up answering a few questions too, but my suggestion is to read and taste. And if you ever get out to NYC, call me. That's serious incidentally. Anyway, I can offer a few suggestions for people. First, don't overlook Beaujolais. It's been producing wine for centuries, mostly for cafes around Lyon, where there were a number of silk merchants. They make a young wine for drinking within a few months and back in the 80s a couple British guys were drinking and made a bet with each other about which one could get the wine to London fastest. That set off a trend for about 10 - 20 years and increased sales of that young Beaujolais. Production shot up and a lot of second rate wine was made to cash in. Then the fad faded, the market crashed, and the area is suffering today. BUT - in the hills around Beaujolais they also have what are called "cru" sites and those are very much worth investigating. For education, bypass the young stuff and look for the crus - they will have a name like Fleurie, Julianas, Morgon, Moulon au Vent, Regnie, or something like that. This area is just south of Burgundy, and some of the winemakers in Burgundy work in both places and you can learn a lot and have fun. Find a producer, say Chermette, or Brun, for example, and sample the wine of the same producer from Fleurie, Morgon and Julianas. Even buy George Dubeouf wines from those places - they are great values and will show you the differences in the soils and environment and microclimates, which the French call "terroir". Because it is the same winemaking, you take that variable out of the equation and presumably taste only the differences that result from the terroir. It's a good lesson and the wine is wonderful, inexpensive, and not high in alcohol. And even try the young Beaujolais just to compare. As a rule it will be simpler, but quite nice. If you can start to understand those, you start to understand what people get excited about when they talk of Burgundy or Piedmont. You can do it with riesling too - they pretty much never use oak barrels in Germany for the rieslings, so you only taste the winemaker and the vineyard. For example, find some Prum - J.J. Prum, S.A. Prum, Weins Prum. They are related family and they make wine from the same vineyard. You can learn about the differences in winemaking. Or or St Urbans Hof and Zillikin who both use the Ockfener Bockstein vineyard and who are probably cheaper than the Prums. Or find a producer who uses multiple vineyards, like St Urbans Hof again, and try their Ockfener Bockstein vs their wine from Piesporter Goldtropfchen, looking at the same winemaker but different vineyards. Try to find Kabinett wines and don't mix Kabinett and Spatlese, etc., for this study, because the sugar will through you off. Write down the differences between the wines that you observe. You can do it in CA too - Andy Beckstoffer owns vineyards that produce really great wines, but those are going to be much more costly than those rieslings are. Schrader for example, is one of many people making wine from the Tokalon property, but you're talking $100 a bottle. The Prums have had their vineyards for years, maybe centuries. Beckstoffer moved to CA from Virginia, bought property, and sells his grapes at a price based on what the winery is going to charge for the wine! So those CA wineries, being pretty new and only recently opened by guys who became millionaires somewhere else and who paid $200,000 and acre, or else whatever Beckstoffer wants per ton, charge a lot of money for their wines, whereas Prum can sell a wine for $26 or less. I love the idea of Two Buck Chuck, but the wine isn't so great IMO. I'd rather pay another dollar and get a better wine and I think they could do it. What you won't have however, is the distinction you get from the other wines I suggested. That's because it is designed specifically NOT to have it. The idea is to create consistency, not personality. Again, no problem here and more power to him, but for me it would be boring to drink the same thing all the time, and I collect wine specifically to have variety. In 2005, the cabernet sauvignon harvest in Napa was pretty big and pretty good. People thinned the crop several times in some vineyards but the grape clusters were large so they still got more tonnage per acre than they normally do, although the wines are top notch anyhow. Prices? Not going anywhere good as far as I can see. As long as wines are selling for $100 and up, the prices aren't coming down. And about that thinning - in France and other regions, there are often regulations regarding yield per acre. They think that if you cut some young grape bunches off, called "green harvesting", the remaining ones will be more concentrated. That's becoming a basic tenet of winemaking. But there is some evidence and some opinion that this is BS. The concept was developed before there were adequate ways to measure. So a long time ago in France they thought they could improve quality by limiting yield. But maybe that's artificial, as illustrated by the 2005 vintage in CA. In a nice warm year, with adequate rain and no heat and healthy vines, the plants just might want to produce a little more with no drop in quality. In 1997 and 2005, that happened in Napa. If one were only to go by yield, we would have less wine but in fact, there was no reason to reduce production since the quality is fine. But as long as people are willing to pay, others will produce wine at $100 and up. In much of France today, they are trying to reduce production to keep prices high. You can figure out the economics of that, but IMO the idea is flawed because the competition is not simply air, it is wine from elsewhere. So if I can't buy or afford French wine, I'll buy Australian wine or Spanish or Chilean. It's a huge generalization and not 100% true, but you might say that in Napa the high prices are the result of extraordinary entry costs while in Bordeaux or Burgundy or Champagne, they are the result of production decisions designed to keep prices high. Again, that's not entirely true but its a shorthand explanation. So you look for areas like Beaujolais, Cotes du Ventoux, Cotes du Rhone, Languedoc in France, or the Rhine in Germany, or Umbira and Puglia in Italy, or Paso Robles or Mendocino in CA, or Walla Walla or Columbia Valley in WA and you can find much better deals. Or look at Argentina - some nice stuff coming out of there. And in the Texas Hill Country, they're working and in Arizona and in other states as well. Some people disparage those wines, but the people have to start somewhere. I used to disparage the wines from Michigan. Then I tried some. Taught me a lesson. I only knew the cheap sugary stuff but there are now some serious producers making good whites on the west of the state. Also in Ohio there are one or two - Kincaid makes really nice cabs down near Kentucky. I would never have believed it if I hadn't tried them. And in fact, they were in some pretty stiff competition - I had them at a dinner with people who brought some serious wine to the table and brought these just to educate us. So if someone is open minded, there is no reason to listen to wine snobs and you can find some great values out there, that are interesting, complex, and even educational if you care to go that way. Cheers all.