PRINTUncorked
Wine guru Karen MacNeil gives insights into the world of red and white refreshment
Courtesy of Karen MacNeil
Headed to the Wine & Food Festival this weekend? Karen MacNeil’s Wine, Food & Friends can refresh your wine knowledge as well as provide you with fun food recipes to complement your favorite wine.
June 17, 2009 | 12:00 p.m. CST
The “pop” of a cork as it flies off a champagne bottle is evocative of many things: A celebration is in order, it’s time to decompress, or someone’s about to get lucky.
Wine is also a go-to drink for many older adults. Most young people, however, probably don’t know much about the drink or the best ways to imbibe it. Some might say wine consumption results in a killer headache the next morning if they forget to take Advil before hitting the pillow. But this doesn’t apply to Karen MacNeil, a bona fide expert on wine.
Although she doesn’t have the degrees to make her a sommelier (an official wine expert), she’s far from inept on the subject. When she began her career, no wine experts had the degrees they do now.
MacNeil knows so much on the topic that in 2001 she published a 910-page book, The Wine Bible, which is devoted to the aromatic beverage. As if that weren’t enough to cover Dionysus’ favorite drink, she wrote a follow-up publication in 2006, Wine, Food & Friends. This book is different from her first because it’s a recipe book. MacNeil provides more than 150 dishes and offers a wine to complement each. That’s enough food and wine to provide merriment for quite some time.
Parents often influence their offspring’s tastes, but that isn’t the case with MacNeil. “One of the amazing aspects of the wine industry is that in many cases the baby boomers’ parents drank beer, not wine,” she says. “Mine didn’t drink wine. Wine chose me; I didn’t choose it. As a young adult I loved it.”
MacNeil segued naturally into writing about wine. She attempted to compose her first novel when she was 12 and later combined her passions of writing and wine.
Despite a knack for putting pen to paper, she took 10 years to write The Wine Bible. “It was a real major undertaking, and I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for it,” the author says.
In her books and in person, MacNeil emphasizes that wine is a culture that should be learned and respected. Wannabe hotshot guys who know nothing about it shouldn’t order fancy wine for a first date in order to woo a girl. “Wine is part of a long history of living well, not about impressing people,” MacNeil says.
The Wine & Food Festival will take over Columbia from June 20 to 27. It’ll be a chance to sample and buy many different types of wine.
Contrary to what some movies portray, an older wine isn’t necessarily the best kind.
“Most wines are meant to be consumed young; most in the United States are ready to drink when you buy them,” MacNeil says. But once the price reaches around $100 or more, the rules are a little different. Potential ageability is generally greater with a high price tag.
Also, it’s OK to have a glass and put the bottle back in the fridge for later. “Most last for a day or two,” MacNeil says. “If you know you’re not going to finish the bottle, pour a glass out, re-cork it and put it in the fridge; don’t let it sit with its cork out.”
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