Food & Wine

Food & Wine is a monthly magazine published by Time Inc. It was founded in 1978 by Ariane and Michael Batterberry. It features recipes, cooking tips, travel information, restaurant reviews, chefs, wine pairings and seasonal/holiday content and has been credited by The New York Times with introducing the dining public to "Perrier, the purple Peruvian potato and Patagonian toothfish".

The premier event for the magazine is the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colorado. The Classic features wine tasting, cooking demonstrations, featured speakers, as well as a cooking competition. Held annually in June, the event is considered the kickoff to the Aspen summer season and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2007.

The winner of Top Chef, the reality television cooking competition, is featured in a spread in this magazine.

History

Michael and Ariane Batterberry's early writing work on food included the 1973 book On the Town in New York, From 1776 to the Present, a culinary history of New York City that was republished in 1998 by Routledge in celebration of the book's 25th anniversary. The Batterberrys had first met an arts benefit on the roof of Manhattan's St. Regis Hotel and hadn't initially been food writers, with Michael working as a journalist and the couple working together as arts editors at Harper's Bazaar. They first conceived of the idea of writing a book about food all over the world after spending a weekend together with best-selling wine writer Hugh Johnson, who later dropped out of the writing project. The original edition of the book was described by The Washington Post as "the authoritative history of dining in the country's culinary capital". The Batterberry's saw "a big changeover at the moment we founded Food and Wine in the late 70's" from a time when "it was the little wife in the kitchen" to a period in which more men developed an interest in cooking.

Wine

Wine (from Latin vinum) is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented grapes or other fruits. Due to a natural chemical balance, grapes ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, water, or other nutrients.Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts produce different styles of wine. These variations result from the complex interactions between the biochemical development of the grape, the reactions involved in fermentation, the terroir (the special characteristics imparted by geography, geology, climate and plant genetics) and subsequent appellation (the legally defined and protected geographical indication used to identify where the grapes for a wine were grown), along with human intervention in the overall process.

Wine has been produced for thousands of years. The earliest evidence of wine to date was found in the country of Georgia, where 8000-year old wine jars were uncovered. Traces of wine have also been found in Iran with 7,000-year-old wine jars and in Armenia with the 6100-year old Areni-1 winery, which is considered to be the earliest known winery by far. The earliest form of grape-based fermented drink however, was found in northern China, where archaeologists discovered 9000-year old pottery jars. Wine had reached the Balkans by c. 4500 BC and was consumed and celebrated in ancient Greece, Thrace and Rome. Throughout history, wine has been consumed for its intoxicating effects, which are evident at normal serving sizes.

Food

Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells to provide energy, maintain life, or stimulate growth.

Historically, people secured food through two methods: hunting and gathering and agriculture. Today, the majority of the food energy required by the ever increasing population of the world is supplied by the food industry.

Food safety and food security are monitored by agencies like the International Association for Food Protection, World Resources Institute, World Food Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization, and International Food Information Council. They address issues such as sustainability, biological diversity, climate change, nutritional economics, population growth, water supply, and access to food.

The right to food is a human right derived from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), recognizing the "right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food," as well as the "fundamental right to be free from hunger."

Wine festival

Annual wine festivals celebrate viticulture and usually occur after the harvest of the grapes which, in the northern hemisphere, generally falls at the end of September and runs until well into October or later. They are common in most wine regions around the world and are to be considered in the tradition of other harvest festivals.

The Egyptian god Osiris was dedicated to wine, but the oldest historically documented wine festivals can be traced back to the Greek celebrations for their wine god Dionysos. The typical ingredients of a wine festival include wine drinking, grape pressing, regional foods, music and, in many areas, religious ritual.

In culture

The grape, and the extraction of its juice to produce wine, is more than a flavorsome food or drink. Both grapes and wine have immense cultural significance in many cultures, and often religious significance too.

Competitions