Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2025 i Food & Wine

2023 PRESQU’ILE SANTA BARBARA COUNTY CHARDONNAY ($26) Some days in the F&W wine room, I’ll taste through 20 dreary bottles before one of them demands attention. One day, that bottle was this impeccably balanced Chardonnay from the Central Coast. It went home with me to drink with a red Thai curry I’d made. Chardonnay with curry? Skip the buttery, oaky ones, and why not? 2023 MÜLLER-CATOIR M-C RIESLING TROCKEN ($28) The word trocken means “dry” in German, and when you see it on a label, that’s exactly what you’ll get. Case in point: this impressive Riesling from a storied producer in Germany’s Pfalz region. It’s steely and stony and brimming with vibrant citrus-nectarine flavor—a stellar transitional white for dinner parties as we head out of the summer months. 2022 MINUS…

IT MIGHT SEEM COUNTERINTUITIVE to pair desserts with sweet wine, but when sugar meets sugar, something magical happens. The sugar in dessert can make dry wines taste overly acidic or bitter, but sweet wines possess the richness and body to complement rather than compete. Whether you’re craving a chocolaty cake, a fruit-filled pie or cobbler, or something buttery and oozing with caramel, the right sweet wine enhances the experience, intensifying the flavors and making every bite and sip more memorable. Here’s how to pick the best wine for any type of dessert. CHOCOLATY DESSERTS Chocolate’s bold flavors need a wine that can stand up to its intensity without getting lost. The key is to match the wine’s sweetness to the chocolate’s richness to avoid any one element overwhelming the palate.…

Eight Italian Wine Benchmarks Italy makes some of the world’s greatest wines. And if you love Italian wine, then you owe it to yourself to invest in—not every night, but every so often—a bottle that will tell you with every sip why the best Italian wines are world-class. It’s true that there are some Italian benchmarks that are hard to find (Valentini’s ultra-elusive Trebbiano d’Abruzzo), some that one simply can’t afford even on a splurge night (Masseto, which runs a cool $975 a bottle), and a few that you can’t get or afford (Soldera’s famed Brunello di Montalcino: Don’t ask, and don’t worry because it isn’t available anyway). But those are the outliers. Most, while pricey, more than reward the investment and, in truth, aren’t too hard to find. Here…

WHEN YOU HEAR THE WORD CIDER, WHAT COMES TO MIND? Is it what kids sip from juice boxes, or the golden-amber liquid families purchase in jugs from a farm stand in autumn, or the piping-hot drink laced with cinnamon served from massive pots at farmers markets? Maybe you think you’ve tried cider but don’t care for it because it’s too sweet. Or, how about none of those things? “Very simply, cider is apple wine,” explains Erik Madrid, a Certified Pommelier and co-owner of the online specialty cider retailer Press Then Press. The definition of cider is juice pressed from apples and fermented into an alcoholic drink that tends to fall between 3% and 8% alcohol by volume. Nonalcoholic apple “cider” isn’t actually cider; it’s juice. But just as wine isn’t…

I USED TO THINK OF JERKY as a gas station snack you bought only in a pinch: tough, leathery, utilitarian. When I was feeling peckish at a coffee shop recently, a bag of Rogue Jerky Co.’s Maple & Brown Sugar beef jerky caught my eye. The forest-clad packaging was more aesthetically pleasing than those bags of yore, and when I dove into the bag, I discovered that it tasted better, too—chewy yet tender, with a balanced sweetness and a deep, rich beef flavor. Jerky is nothing new; cultures around the globe have been curing and preserving meat for millennia. But right now, it’s clearly having a renaissance, with a glut of new artisanal jerky products to indulge in. Here are five brands that represent the best of the trend. SIDE…

WE WEREN’T IN A HURRY to get to our destination. And even if we had wanted to rush, the curves of Chapman’s Peak Drive on South Africa’s southwest coast—and the views along it—wouldn’t have allowed it. Luci, my bubbly, in-the-know driver, was taking me around the vineyards of Franschhoek, 45 miles east of Cape Town, and the Swartland, about the same distance north. But first, she insisted on driving me along this incredible road, which undulates south from the city past Table Mountain National Park toward the Cape of Good Hope. We stopped at places like Boulders Beach, where penguins peeked out from behind boulders as the sea washed into False Bay, the water gradually changing from shades of turquoise to a rich, deep navy. There were plenty of swimmers…

“DO YOU SEE THOSE LIGHTS OVER THERE?” Pavle Milić points to a warm glow that breaks through the pitch-black night. “That’s Agua Prieta in Mexico, 30 minutes away.” It’s 2 a.m., and we’re standing in the middle of Los Milics’ vineyards outside Elfrida, Arizona. The cuadrilla (crew) started harvesting just after midnight, and they are working steadily down the rows. Above us, the stars are unlike anything I’ve seen before. Constellations trace through the dark night sky, dimly illuminating the bustle of harvest. Around me, I can hear the low hum of insects, the rustling of Milić’s dogs zigzagging through the vines, the clang of grapes dropping into plastic buckets, and the stomping feet of the crew as they run up and down the rows. But at dawn, as the…

All for Wine, Wine for All THE OTHER NIGHT, I was having dinner at a buzzy new wine bar in New York City when I was introduced to a wine podcaster. After a few pleasantries, he leaned in to tell me he didn’t care for our wine coverage. “Not edgy enough,” he said. “That’s the point,” I told him. “We don’t give hot takes.” The next night, a sommelier at a wonderful neighborhood restaurant took more than five minutes to help my party decide between five Chenin Blancs on the overly complicated wine list. He seemed to relish being the only one on the dining room floor with the decoder. What’s with these guys? The great majority of people I know who farm grapes or make or sell wine are…

RICOTTA GNOCCHI WHEN GNOCCHI IS BAD, it’s like eating chewy rocks. But when it’s at its best, each pillowy dumpling is a bite of heaven. The difference between the two lies entirely in technique—something chef Geoffrey Zakarian has honed over several decades. Rather than a traditional potato dough, Zakarian uses whole-milk ricotta cheese to give the dumplings a light and tender texture. While similar to gnudi, which are also Italian dumplings made with ricotta, gnocchi contain more flour, giving the dough just enough structure to be rolled into ropes rather than delicately scooped into balls. Cooking the gnocchi is simple and straightforward: Boil them in salted water in batches so they don’t overcrowd the pot and bring down the temperature of the water. They let you know when they are…

MAKING CANDY AT HOME can be a labor-intensive process that is rife with opportunities for failure, from scorched sugar to seized chocolate. But what if we told you that there’s a recipe that delivers all the gooey, chocolaty pleasure of a homemade Twix bar with nary a candy thermometer in sight—and just 20 minutes of hands-on time? That recipe is for carmelitas, which are a revelation to make, and to eat. These decadent and candylike cookie bars feature layers of buttery oats, semisweet chocolate chips, toasty pecans, and dulce de leche. In the oven, the chocolate and dulce de leche melt into irresistibly molten and chewy centers that contrast with the bars’ crisp exterior. The secret to this dessert’s foolproof nature is an entire jar of store-bought dulce de leche,…