Natural Wines, Explained

In her slender new book, the wine writer Alice Feiring deconstructs natural wine, the trend that’s sweeping the wine world. Ms. Feiring, whose middle name should be “terroir,” starts by describing what natural wine is not: It lacks the fruit, power and oak of some high-end wines. Ms. Feiring takes the same approach to wine…

Brooklyn Gets a Dominican Chocolate Shop

Rizek Cacao, a chocolate grower, processor and exporter, was founded in the Dominican Republic in 1905 and is now being run by the fifth generation of the Rizek family. The company owns 25 farms on the island and contract with another 2,500 small farmers to whom they provide technical support through a nonprofit organization. It…

Buy a Rotisserie Chicken Tonight

Good morning. It would take you a long time to find someone dumber at business than me. But rotisserie chickens seem like a pretty good play, I think, at least if you could find good birds to spin and the right wood-burning stove on which to spin them. Salt, pepper, a secret basting sauce, maybe…

Sausage King and Queen Take Stock

ERWINNA, Pa. — Five and a half years ago, Stephen McDonnell, the founder of Applegate Farms, the company that made cured meats seem like health food, collapsed on a street in Florence, Italy. It was Christmas Eve, and he and his wife, Jill Kearney, their three daughters and other family members were on their way…

Summer Drinking at Its Simplest

The path of high-summer cocktail hour matches the ease and pace of its season: Open the refrigerator, take out a bottle, relish the cold condensation in your hand, pour, mix, drink. Nothing embodies that spirit quite like wine cocktails, which take little more effort than remembering where you last set down the corkscrew. Start with…