Did Trader Joe’s make a Big Mistake with this Wine?

We can recommend great wine for days, or even weeks, and they are usually not five dollars or even $10 picks. But in this case we’re going to make an exception, because it seems like someone at Trader Joe’s made a big mistake.

There is a Perrin Cotes du Rhone Reserve that is currently priced at only $7.99, and tasting it, this bottle could definitely go for 35% more than that amount in a different establishment. At least that’s our opinion about this drinkable medium-bodied French table wine made from Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre.

What do you think? Try it and tell us. And… if you do like it, stock up, before someone at Trader Joe’s realizes the error of their ways.

 

Air France Serves New Menus Signed By Chefs Régis Marcon and Mathieu Viannay

Air France has teamed up with French Michelin-starred chefs Régis Marcon and Mathieu Viannay to sign its La Première and Business long-haul menus. With vegetarian dishes, meat, poultry and fish, the chefs have created haute couture dishes for the airline’s customers to enjoy over the coming months on departure from Paris.

Three Michelin-star gastronomy in the La Première cabin

In the airline’s exclusive La Première cabin, three Michelin-starred chef Régis Marcon has come up with six new tasty dishes. Accompanied by the expertise of the Servair Culinary Studio, of which he is president, Régis Marcon revisits the seasonal products that are close to his heart:

  • – Vegetable lasagna, with tangy chive cream;
  • – Braised veal shank, sage sauce, potato gratin with porcini mushrooms;
  • – Beef tenderloin in red wine, sautéed potato and morel cake;
  • – Pike and shrimp cake with lobster sauce, sautéed girolle mushrooms with tarragon, spinach;
  • – Mixed scallops and scampi with truffles, reduced jus and julienne vegetables;
  • – Confit pigeon, apricot sauce, lemon bulgur, mushrooms and butternut.

Fine dining in the Business cabin

In the Business cabin, Air France has, for the first time, entrusted its menu to two Michelin-starred chef Mathieu Viannay, with 8 original dishes combining delicate flavours and local produce to be enjoyed on board:

  • – Penne pasta, arugula and spinach gratin, ricotta cream with lovage;
  • – Risotto verde, vegetable Bolognese;
  • – Beef tenderloin, macaire potato patties, roasted beet and smoked meat juices;
  • – Poultry fillet with morel mushrooms, spelt and butternut squash risotto;
  • – Poached cod fillet with baby vegetables and taggiasca olives;
  • – Pike perch fillet, armorican sauce, yellow carrots and herb semolina;
  • – Braised veal shank with sweet spices, split pea puree, mange tout and hazelnuts;
  • – Roasted guinea fowl in coffee, celery confit and stewed autumn vegetables.

About Régis Marcon

Bocuse d’Or in 1995 and acclaimed with three Michelin stars, Régis Marcon embodies an entire story of fine French dining. More than a style or a period, his cuisine symbolizes his own story. In the department of Ardèche, in the region of Auvergne, between Velay and Vivarais, Régis Marcon found the roots of his cuisine in a familiar and family territory. Since taking over the family-run hotel restaurant in 1979, and never leaving his cocoon in Saint-Bonnet-le-Froid, Régis Marcon became one of the greatest chefs of our time, by highlighting his regional products such as mushrooms and green Puy lentils.

About Mathieu Viannay

Two Michelin-starred chef Mathieu Viannay has always been a gourmet. A lover of delicate flavours, he handles local products with success. Winner of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France award in 2004, he revisits traditional recipes in a contemporary twist. So it was only natural, that, like a spiritual son, he took over Eugenie Brazier’s cult restaurant “la Mère Brazier”, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. Mathieu Viannay also signs the menu of the “Trente et Un” restaurant at the hotel Portopia in Kobe, Japan, giving it an inimitable French touch. He also coordinates the 12 catering outlets of the travel department at the Samaritaine store in Paris.

About Air France

Since 1933, Air France has been promoting and highlighting France throughout the world. With an activity divided between passenger transport, cargo transport and aeronautical maintenance, Air France is a major air transport player. A workforce of more than 45,000 staff are committed on a daily basis to offering each customer a unique travel experience. Air France, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Transavia make up the Air France-KLM Group. The Group relies on its powerful hubs at Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam-Schiphol to offer a vast international network. Its Flying Blue frequent flyer program has over 17 million members. Air France and KLM are members of the SkyTeam alliance which has a total of 19 member airlines.

20 of the Best Chocolate Advent Calendar Gifts on Instagram

Advent may not be something everyone celebrates, but everyone can enjoy a tasty chocolate advent calendar. Not only do they keep track of the month of December fairly accurately, they also contain fantastically delicious chocolate treats, and a way to bond with family and friends. Below are some of the most exciting and creative that we’ve found on Instagram, and which (if they’re still in stock) make great gifts.






















Vinfolio Creates a Program to Manage Investments in Fine Wine

 

Vinfolio, one of the country’s leading fine wine companies, recently announced the launch of a new cutting-edge fine wine investment program. Now, in addition to securing some of the most sought after wines by the bottle, Vinfolio clients can also gain access to a selection of investment-grade stock in original cases directly on the company’s e-commerce platform, or by working directly with Vinfolio’s executive team to build a bespoke fine wine investment portfolio.

From the time of my initial investment in Vinfolio back in 2016, it seemed that the U.S. market was lacking a player who could bring the idea of fine wine as an investment opportunity to the mainstream in a clear and accessible way,” says Don St. Pierre, Executive Chairman of Vinfolio. “Now, with the addition of more than 5,000 cases of investment-grade wines to our platform and the launch of our full-service investment program, we are proudly assuming that mantle.”

Historically speaking, fine wine has outperformed many of the traditional asset classes available and we are seeing more and more people looking to diversify by building a wine portfolio,” Vinfolio President Adam Lapierre says. “We believe we are in a unique position to support clients embarking on this journey thanks to our deep knowledge of the collectible fine wine market, unmatched global network of suppliers and innovative business model. I’m particularly excited by our full-service investment program: the process is extremely simple, fully transparent and, at the same time, low cost to the investor. It’s a game-changer.”

Vinfolio’s strength lies not just in the sourcing of fine wines at the best prices, but also in its use of technology to create a platform that provides both buyers and sellers with all the requisite tools and intelligence to successfully build and liquidate a wine portfolio. In addition to its marketplace platform, Vinfolio has proprietary access to crucial flow-data which lies at the heart of all our decision-making. The company’s algorithm dynamically looks at current U.S. retail listings, auction sale prices, and sales on its own platform to determine what is the current fair market value of a given wine. From there, Vinfolio can trigger buy or sell activities to ensure a sound investment and a healthy return.

Over the last three decades, investment-grade wine has performed very strongly against just about all major asset classes. Analysis of a representative selection of the foremost traded investment-grade wines reveals a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 11 percent since 1988. In context, the returns for U.S. Equities (DJIA), U.K. equities (FTSE), Asia equities (Hang Seng), Gold, and Oil for the same period were materially lower.

ABOUT VINFOLIO

Vinfolio is majority-owned by Executive Chairman Don St. Pierre Jr. and his business partner and good friend Allan Warburg, co-founder and co-CEO of Bestseller Fashion Group China. St. Pierre is the recipient of numerous wine industry accolades, including being named number seven on Decanter magazine’s 2011 Top 50 global wine industry power players and selected by Wine Enthusiast Magazine as the 2011 International Man of the Year. In 2012, the French government awarded St. Pierre Jr. the degree of Knight in the French Ordre du Mérite Agricole, and in 2015, he was appointed as a member of the supervisory board of Vinexpo Overseas. Vinfolio’s ownership also includes Jean-Michel Valette, who chairs the Education and Examination Board (EEB) of the Institute of Masters of Wine and is former chairman of Robert Mondavi Corporation and Peet’s Coffee, Jon Moramarco, former CEO of Constellation Brands, and Steve Case, founder of AOL and co-founder at venture capital firm Revolution

Visit https://www.vinfolio.com/wine-investing for more details on Vinfolio’s new investment initiative.

Word of the Day: How to Pronounce Aioli

There is always great pleasure in knowing the correct pronunciation of a word you use in front of other people, both friends and colleagues. Unfortunately the real world challenge comes from whether they also know how to correctly pronounce it, and in which region you are. The last thing you want is to misled even further.

Aioli is a good example. It is word both French and Spanish, and means “garlic” and “oil,” which are the two key ingredients.

So for the record:

AMERICA (often more like “aye-oh-lee, but can be the European version as well)

EUROPE (always more like “eye-oh-lee”)

Just in case you are curious, here’s the Australian pronunciation

4 TasteTV Books about CHOCOLATE!

We’re a busy lot here at TasteTV, as part of our group is TCB-Cafe Publishing. Plus, because we all love chocolate, you know we’ve got some great chocolate tomes for you to peruse and enjoy! Here are four of them.


THE CHOCOLATIER’S PRIMER

 

TasteTV, the International Chocolate Salon and TCB Cafe Publishing and Media are pleased to announce the publication of the newest book,

THE CHOCOLATIER’S PRIMER

This new book contains experiences, tips, advice from those who have already done it.  A must-have for any aspiring or current chocolatier and chocolate maker.

FIND IT ON AMAZON: https://amzn.to/2jEAx32

Are you interested in chocolate and confections as a small business? There are many how-to books on starting an enterprise, but often the best advice comes directly from those with actual experience. Thus came the idea for this book; this “primer.” Why not ask chocolatiers firsthand what they have experienced and what they recommend? With this concept in mind, we composed a set of key questions and asked them to interesting artisans from around the world with experience in both the business and creative sides of chocolate. Their answers on creativity, product, branding and business are very frank and often personal, and written in a journal or diary style. The information in the resulting primer is worth its weight in gold.

 

FEATURING

  • Aelan Chocolate Makers
  • Amella Caramels
  • Bella Sophia Chocolates
  • Cōchu Chocolatier
  • David Bacco Chocolatier
  • Dean’sSweets
  • Delysia Chocolatier
  • Endorfin Foods
  • Fera’wyn’s Artisan Chocolates
  • Finding Fine Chocolate
  • Flying Noir
  • Forte Chocolates
  • La Châtelaine Chocolat Co.
  • Michael’s Chocolates
  • Mignon Chocolate
  • Mink Chocolates
  • SELEUSS Chocolates
  • Solkiki Chocolatemaker
  • The Oakland Chocolate Company
  • Waialua Estate Chocolate

 

FRENCH CHOCOLATE

French CHOCOLATE:
Recipes, Language & Directions to Francais au
Chocolat
New 4th Edition

Recipes, Language & Directions to Français au Chocolat Fourth Edition, Over 200 hundred photographs Travel around the world on a French-flavored Chocolate Trip with great chocolate recipes from the world’s top chefs and chocolatiers!

 

FRENCH CHOCOLATE introduces you to an entirely new language of taste. Enjoy the best of both worlds with the 4th Edition of this bestselling Chocolate Lover’s Guide to French. French CHOCOLATE takes you on a culinary exploration of the intimate relationship between international French culture and global chocolate cuisine.

With Foreword by Bernard Poussin of historic royal Parisian chocolatier Debauve & Gallais, and topics ranging from songs by Trenet, stories by Proust, and fashion by Rykiel, to recipes from exotic locales such as Paris, San Francisco, New Orleans, London, Chicago, Australia, and New York, FRENCH Chocolate excites your appetite and your imagination.

Features over 50 mouth-watering chocolate dishes from top chefs, chocolatiers, celebrities and chocolate lovers.

FIND IT ON AMAZON HERE


 

THE OFFICIAL CHOCOLATE JOURNAL

THE OFFICIAL CHOCOLATE JOURNAL. Use for tastings, recipes, travels, shops, chocolate salons.

Now available, you’ll be able to keep track of your chocolate tastings, your favorite chocolates, your favorite shops and even recipes with THE OFFICIAL CHOCOLATE JOURNAL (2nd Edition).

Over 140 pages for you to fill.

Find it on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2TZLokL


 

THE CHOCOLATE GUIDE: North America

The Chocolate Guide:
North American
2nd Edition eBook
for Kindle, Nook, iPads, iPhones

A photo-filled guide to over 80 of North America’s most interesting, innovative and delicious chocolatiers, chocolate makers, and confectioners. Includes profiles, specialities, descriptions, and more for the chocolate connoisseur, or for someone who is just discovering unique and tasty chocolate.

Ideal for chocoholics who travel regionally or locally, or just from an armchair, this book is the ultimate North American tour, featuring spots from mom-and-pop stores to upscale chocolateries. Abundant photos, informative profiles of chocolatiers and shops, and tips on local chocolate information make this an exciting book on North American chocolate. The Chocolate Guide is essential reading for anyone looking for a new chocolate experience: this includes chocolate lovers (of course) but also food writers, journalists, and gift-givers looking for unique presents for their favorite cacao connoisseur. Beautifully designed and illustrated in ebook format.

FIND IT ON AMAZON Here.