Holiday Leftovers with the Right Wine Pairing

Written by Marisa Finetti & Kirk Peterson After the once-glorious, now Tupperware’d holiday dinner leftovers are banished to the fridge for the night, it seems only right to give them the attention they deserve when they inevitably re-emerge the next day. Reheated Thanksgiving dinner plate. You kept declining the offer to “make you a plate,” but they wouldn’t let you leave without it. Now, you’re famished and suddenly that congealed mess of browns, greens and smattering of reds actually look…

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From the endangered list to the wine list

Written by Kirk Peterson and Marisa Finetti Overshadowed by popular—even famous—A-list neighbors, certain grape varieties can fall to the background, even approach extinction. The celebrated versatility and hardiness of well-recognized grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay have also severely diminished diversity, both in the vineyard and in our wine glasses. But in the last half century, rare and indigenous grape varieties are being revived by passionate winemakers and conservationists who believe in their quality and potential, encouraging adventurous…

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Greetings from Napa Valley

Award-winning duo Kirk Peterson and Marisa Finetti are an unlikely match, but they share a love of food and drink. In their column, TasteBuds, (originally published in VEGASSEVEN.com) they devour dishes and demystify drinks. Aside from knowing that having a day job would be more helpful in paying the bills, being a wine writer can be a beautiful thing. And if you visit Napa Valley, like Marisa Finetti and I recently did during the Professional Wine Writers Symposium at Meadowood…

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Stardissed: Revising can-to-table

TasteBUDs and award-winning duo Kirk Peterson and Marisa Finetti are an unlikely match, but they share a love of food and drink. In their new column, TasteBuds, they devour dishes and demystify drinks. This column originally appeared in VEGAS SEVEN magazine. The honeymoon is decidedly over: American consumption of canned tuna is at an all-time low. What was once the most popular seafood—not to mention staple—of the American diet between 1950 to 2000 has all but disappeared from the collective consciousness…

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They polished the glassware

Written by Marisa Finetti and Kirk Peterson. Originally published in DAVID magazine. Awarded best non-staff writer(s), Nevada Press Association   The lights are extinguished. The room now dark. The only glimmer of light comes through the floor-to-ceiling window panes facing Las Vegas Boulevard, twenty-three floors below. The lowest lumens are enough to keep us from knocking over the wine glasses, enough to find our fork. But that’s about it. There’s no color, only shades of grey. Dinner tonight appears like a…

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Pilgrim Era Thanksgiving Ingredients and Lambrusco

Originally published in VEGAS SEVEN By Marisa Finetti & Kirk Peterson (Updated in 2019) The huge, ungainly bird that has become the de facto centerpiece around which the entire Thanksgiving feast is built gives us a feeling of authenticity, as we imagine that America’s settlers might have chomped on a crispy turkey leg in November 1621. But the “first Thanksgiving” meal was far different from our modern holiday offerings. While the starring meats included deer, ducks and geese, cranberry sauce…

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A Sunken, Drunken Treasure

It is a known fact that a good, complex sparkling wine undergoes secondary fermentation in the bottle under controlled conditions, such as a dark underground cellar. Not the case for this bubbly. Named for its origins, Bisson “Abissi” is actually aged in the deep-sea abyss, nearly 200 feet down, off the coastal town of Portofino, Italy. Ligurian winemaker Pierluigi Lugano, who makes Italian spumante in the classic Champagne method, lacked adequate cellar space to age his wine. So, his creative…

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