If you ask a person from Taiwan to choose the 10 dishes that best represent his or her cuisine, Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup is inevitably on the list. More than a beloved national dish, the soup has become something of an obsession — like pizza to New Yorkers. Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup was created by soldiers who retreated with the Nationalist government from mainland China to Taiwan in the 1950s. For political reasons, they were banned from returning to their hometowns. Missing both family and familiar cuisine, the soldiers used local ingredients to create a dish that evoked the flavors…
Born and raised in Taiwan, now based in NYC, Joyce Lin is a sommelier, writer, educator, and wine consultant, holding both CMS and WSET 3 certifications. Joyce’s interests in food and wine led her to create 酒意思Sip with Joyce, an omnichannel platform providing wine pairing ideas with daily meals, specializing in Asian cuisines. Joyce believes that through food and wine, people of diverse backgrounds can be unified and share the joy of life with each other.
Slopes tilting toward shimmering water; a long, cool growing season; and shallow slate soil — to a connoisseur of German wines, these features immediately evoke the storied Mosel region. Yet they also describe a much younger wine-growing area: New York State’s Finger Lakes, or FLX. Long dismissed as a producer of tourist-friendly sweet wines made from non-vinifera grapes, the Finger Lakes now give life to vintages that express grape and terroir with nuance and sophistication. These include wines created by German-born winemakers, such as Johannes Reinhardt at Kemmeter Wines and Peter Weis at Weis Vineyards, as well as those who trained…...
The Rheingau. A small, splendidly historic region of aristocratic estates and superb terroir awaiting an energizing charge. The steady ship in Germany’s often storm-tossed seas, navigating a course of admirable quality through the centuries. Its large estates set global benchmarks; its noble mien, iconic landscapes, and heralded vineyards have always set it apart. In recent times, however, the Rheingau’s identity has become somewhat obscured by the dominance of large, in some cases impersonal estates and global warming has diminished its long-held prominence as one of the few German wine regions capable of achieving consistent ripeness. If it is often described as “underachieving,” the word does hint at…...
André Gussek remembers very clearly how it all got started: Right around the time he was hired as cellar master at the historic eastern German Kloster Pforta winery in 1982, “the first Spätburgunder vines, West German clones obtained via foreign trade,” arrived at the estate in Naumburg an der Saale, roughly 60 kilometers from Leipzig and some 220 kilometers from Berlin. “In the fog of history, it was difficult to see precisely where they came from,” Gussek explains with characteristic calm. Much clearer is what they became: a catalyst for red wine to assume “an ever-larger role” in the former…...
A fresh crop of Masters of Wine was announced late last month: Ten individuals who have grasped the holy grail of wine education. Among them is Moritz Nikolaus Lüke of Bonn — the tenth German to achieve the distinction. He joins an elite crew who have earned the title by passing legendarily rigorous blind tasting examinations and writing a series of theory papers as well as a research-based thesis. TRINK caught up with Lüke to find out what the experience was like, learn about his Covid-driven research paper — and get an answer to the question we’re all naturally most curious about: what he drank…...
Over the last decade, Berlin has established itself as a wine city. No small feat, since little quality wine is made within a five-hour driving radius. But in the early 2010s the natural wine movement brought in “small plates and natural wine” bistros and more and more distributors — independent wine stores who both import and buy wines and then sell them to both restaurants and consumers alike — are basing themselves here. The RAW wine fair made Berlin its Central European hub back in 2015. Before March 2020, business was good. Then came Covid. Putting the Neighbor back in Neighborhood at…...
