Mary Ross is an internationally-recognized wine and food professional, educator and journalist. Read more about Mary at http://www.thechoppingblock.com/meet-our-sommelier.
Recent Posts
A Few Things I Learned on my Trip to Catalonia
I’ve just returned from a trip to the Catalonia region in northeast Spain, as a guest of the EU’s “Taste the Difference: Quality Wines from the Heart of Europe” campaign.
French Onion Soup wasn’t the only reason Julia Child said, “It is hard to imagine a civilization without onions.” As far back as 3200 B.C., the onion was so central to our daily diet that it appeared ...
Ever since the 1600’s, when the glass bottle and cork stopper became the preferred package for wine, we’ve been trying to figure out how to get the wine back out of the bottle!
I’m all about following rules: I stop at stop signs, I accept a breath mint when offered, and I’ll never again wear horizontal stripes on my hips. But there’s one rule I break often and it’s the most ...
A Step-by-Step Guide with Video to Opening Champagne and Sparkling Wine
“Here’s to Champagne, the drink divine, that helps us forget all our troubles. It’s made from a dollar’s-worth of wine and three-dollars’-worth of bubbles.” (Anonymous)
If you want to hear that there are lots of sparkling wines just as good as Champagne but cheaper, you need to ask someone else. Given the choice, I always recommend true Champagne, especially when ...
Wine & Cheese: Culinary Heaven or Eden? You Decide
You say you adore sea salt caramels and suppose it’s because they’re just so darn delicious! Sort of. In fact, we’re hard wired to crave the nutritional necessities of salt, sugar and fat in modern ...
Rosè wine sales are down, and that’s fine by me. Don’t get me wrong: I love a rosè and a nosh at the end of a day, a rich Spanish rosado to wash down barbeque, an elegant rosè Champagne to enhance a ...
Here’s one of my aha! moments with wine: I’m a young sommelier, tasting a Gewurztraminer for placement on my wine list. With my nose deep in the glass, I sniff - and poof! In an instant, I’m ...
