Maker's Table

In early June I added a daily walk to my morning routine. I’d spent the winter hunched over writing projects, HappyLight ablaze to stave off seasonal gloom. I’d tried to stick to my daily exercise routine, but by the end of each dark, cold afternoon I’d often chosen the comforts of my kitchen over those of the gym. What’s the use, I’d grumble to myself. My stupid post-menopausal body isn’t responding, anyway. I reckon I’d reduced my activity by about twenty percent.

A lexicon is a language’s catalog of words, its complete set of meaningful units. Lexicon derives from the Greek lexikon, “book of words,” from lexis, “word.” Lexicon is also used casually to refer to a subset of words embraced by specialists in a particular domain, a professionalized vocabulary. Wine has its own lexicons, not one but many. The language of wine includes terms in common vernacular use, like smooth, fruity, and bold.

Welcome back to The Salt, my roundup of favorite recent writing about wine and food, thirst and hunger. The Salt is returning from a brief hiatus as I cranked out other projects. Last week I finished a long essay I’d been developing over months, then pitched to a favorite editor. Fingers crossed for success, but if it doesn’t land there at least you’ll read it here.

Potassium is an elemental metal with atomic number 19 and symbol K in the periodic table. It readily gives up its sole outer electron; in fact it’s so reactive it doesn’t exist in nature as a pure metal but is instead bound as a compound or salt. The symbol K derives from the Neo-Latin word for potassium, kalium. The word potassium derives from potash (literally “pot ash”), historically made by soaking wood ash in water to yield caustic lye.

Jurançon (zhoo-rahn-SOHN) is an appellation in southwestern France, in the bumpy foothills of the Pyrenees, producing dry and sweet white wines from indigenous grapes. The dry wine, Jurançon Sec, is crisp and aromatic, with flavors of ripe stone fruit and spice. The sweet wines, Jurançon and Jurançon Vendanges Tardives, or late harvest, are the main attraction, produced by a process called passerillage (pah-seh-ree-YAZH) in which bunches are dried on the vine, desiccating and concentrating sugars.

Welcome back to The Salt, my weekly curated collection of writing and marginalia at the intersection of wine, food, and culture. The Michelin Guide, which has long issued ratings for restaurants (using Stars) and hotels (using Keys), recently announced they would begin rating wine producers (using Grapes). They started with Burgundy, an approach about as sensible as setting an electrical apprentice to work on the track’s third rail.

Indigenous means arising within or naturally occurring in a particular place. The territorial nature of indigeneity is key to its application to wine. The word stems from Old Latin indu, “within,” and gignere, “to beget,” “give birth,” or “bear.” These roots also give us genesis, genetics, and genre. In wine, synonyms for indigenous include native and autochthonous.

Troon Vineyard recently released their 2025 Vermentino and 2023 Syrah, grown and made in Oregon’s Applegate Valley. By chance I’d been aging one of their earlier Syrah releases, the 2021, so I had an excuse to A/B these vintages. I’m here to tell you that a little bottle age looks great on this wine. The Applegate Valley lies entirely within the bounds of southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley AVA.

Welcome back to The Salt, my weekly curated collection of writing and marginalia at the intersection of wine, food, and culture. Dining in and out in Paris The New York Public Library’s Buttolph archive catalogs a trove of menus collected between 1880 and 1920, America’s dawn of dining out. Writer Stephen Lurie reviewed thousands of these early menus to decipher what they signal about the evolution not only of food, flavor, and taste but also social status, entertainment, and access.

I recently attended a virtual tasting of two premium Douro table wines by Prats & Symington, a joint project between Port producer Symington Family Estates and the Prats family, former longtime owners of Cos d’Estournel. Bruno Prats, who until 1998 was Cos’s winemaker, and Rupert Symington, Symington’s C.E.O., led the tasting.