Maria Hunt: Wine, Spirits & Beer

When my editor at Montage Magazine asked me to write a piece on Brazilian wines, I wasn’t sure I had heard her correctly. “Are you sure you don’t want a piece on Portuguese wines?” I asked. But, I soon learned that Brazil’s wine-making history stretched back to the 1870s, with an influx of Northern Italians. That wine was made from table grapes for domestic consumers. But when Brazil allowed wine from other South American countries to be imported, the domestic wine industry knew it was time to step up their game. 

Click to read the full story Vinho Brasileiro.

Once the barrel-aged cocktail trend had taken hold, I started noticing lots of other food artisans and chefs were adopting the technique. I wrote versions of this cocktail-influenced trend piece for Forbes.com and Wine & Spirits Magazine. 

I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to help launch the Forbes Travel Guide site, first as a full-time remote senior copy editor and copywriter and later as a correspondent, contributing articles about chefs, hotels, destinations and events. Some of my pieces were syndicated on the Forbes website as well. 

Click to read Seven Sensational Wines to Taste While You Can

Click to read Your Guide to Northern California’s Anderson Valley

Talk to any sommelier and you’ll quickly learn that riesling is one of her favorite white grapes, for its versatility, sheerness and magical ability to age. For this June 2014 article, I secured interviews with a master of wine, master sommelier, the head of the Culinary Institute of America’s wine program and the then-owner of the only monopole in the U.S., the Cole Ranch about their appreciation for this singular grape. 

These are two of my favorite cocktail stories because the Sazerac and Bloody Mary are both foundation cocktails and they both share a sense of place.  

The Pisco Punch, Mai Tai and Irish Coffee are the Bay Area equivalents. 

Click to view a high-resolution PDF of Hard Enough for You?

Former French Laundry sommelier and self-taught winemaker André Hueston Mack is one of the coolest people in wine right now. The first African American to win the Chaîne de Rotisseurs Young Sommelier competition, he makes approachable Burgundian wines that just might have a label inspired by a hip-hop lyric. 

When a celebrity publicist offered me the chance to interview Drew Barrymore at Pebble Beach Food & Wine on her new wine (a pinot grigio), I said why not? The actress was engaging as we talked about travelling to pursue her love of food, her favorite chefs and the next wines she hopes to release. 

In a larger story, I’d like to explore why celebrities are now creating wine brands and whether their screen cred rubs off on a label. 

I love telling the origin story behind famous cocktails, and the Daiquiri seemed like it needed rescuing from being seen as a cheesy blender drink — after all Jackie Kennedy had the recipe taped to the wall of the White House kitchen.

Rosé wines from around the world are fun to write about because of the way they symbolize the summer season. And like bubbly, they’re very food friendly and I think people find them slightly less intimidating than other wines.

For this Spring 2014 piece in Montage Hotels Magazine, I interviewed Sacha Lichine of Chateau d’Esclans, which has created a whole new category of luxury rosé. Note that the magazine followed AP style, which omits the accent from rosé.

Click to see the full article The Rise of Rosé.

I started studying wine while at the Union-Tribune so I could assess wine lists in my restaurant reviews and know what I was talking about.  I had always loved sparkling wines, and was thrilled to learn how well they paired with foods. But few people outside of wine circles knew this.  At the same time, I noticed more and more international sparkling wines showing up at my local BevMo. 

I pitched a sparkling cocktail book in 2007, and it was purchased by Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House. My book was unique at the time because it was educational as well as entertaining, teaching readers the difference between the terms sparkling wine and Champagne, how to pronounce different French words commonly found on labels, how to set up a home bar and make mixers like simple syrup. 

The recipes started with classics like the Kir Royale and Champagne Julep, and progressed through themed chapters of original cocktails created by me and other mixologists. I hired the team to produce the book, styled all the photos and created a blog to help promote it and create a platform for myself.

While freelancing full time, I had the opportunity to visit a cooking school in Puglia. I shared what I learned about this windswept region’s wine and cuisine in this article for The Tasting Panel. One of the most interesting discoveries was that negroamaro doesn’t mean “black bitter” in Italian — it actually means “blackest of blacks.” 

Anyone who loves fine riesling owes a toast to pioneering importer Rudi Wiest, who started bringing some of Germany’s best family wines by Fritz Haag, JJ Prüm and others into the U.S. in the late 1970s. He’s also worked to simplify German wine labels so it’s easier for people to know what they’re buying.

 It was around 2000 or so that I took my first trip to the Valle de Guadalupe, the young wine country east of Ensenada, Mexico as a staff food and drinks writer for  the San Diego Union-Tribune. I soon came to know the major winemakers, but the visionary in the area was Hugo d’Acosta, often called the Robert Mondavi of Mexico. He believed in terroir-driven wine, opened a school to teach locals the skills to work in wineries and mentored anyone interested in making their own wine. The Valle is now a fashionable destination for Americans, and home to more than 100 wineries.