Never let it be said that the Swirl Girls aren’t the first on the scene for new wines… sometimes, anyway.

That’s the case with trying the Casa Silva Reserva Sauvignon Blanc 2009. You won’t find many tasting notes about it because it’s fairly new on shelves. We had a bottle sent to us for review. You can find it at Gardens Wine & Spirits and at Carmine’s Gourmet Market, both in Palm Beach Gardens (costs about $12). Bottom line: I’d say it’s worth it.

Made from a Chilean Colchagua Valley winery with vineyards that were first planted in 1892, it’s a pretty light gold sauv blanc, with a nose of apples and flowers. It tastes of pears, and has a crisp, zingy (is that a wine word?) side, with a fairly short, round finish. I enjoyed drinking it by itself and would definitely drink it again in a minute.

I made one of my favorite pasta dishes with tuna, white beans and tomatoes, and the wine paired beautifully with that. Both the dish and the wine have a tang to them that makes a very tasty combination.
Read the full story

For New-World wine lovers, the Carmenere grape is certainly not a new buzzword. It’s probably been tried and appreciated and occasionally forgotten by many a wine lovers. But for those seeking one of the best values in wine and looking for something a little bit different, it’s time to re-examine the Carmenere.

A little (tiny bit) of history. The Carmenere grape is now as synonymous with Chile as Malbec is with Argentina. But it started out in France as one of the six red grapes of Bordeaux and was planted heavily in the Medoc region. Most of the world thought it completely eradicated from the Phylloxera plague in 1867. But in the 1990s, visiting French scientists were perplexed by the qualities of a wine they thought was Merlot. Being the curious sort, they studied it and announced that what Chile had been selling as Merlot was, in fact, the Carmenere, a strand brought over from France centuries ago that dodged Phylloxera due to Chile’s climate. Read the full story

Ruth Van Waerebeek, a Belgian-born chef and cookbook author, mixes a risotto in preparation for an evening class at the Publix Apron's Cooking School in Boca Raton. She's the chef at Chile's famed Concha y Toro winery. (Brandon Kruse, The Post)

The Belgian-born adventurer and gastronome Ruth Van Waerebeek found heaven on earth while traveling in Chile. This is a woman who once navigated the seas aboard a 33-foot sailboat, stopping at random in Caribbean ports to take cooking gigs, a woman who had seen the world and who regarded borders as merely
ornamental. There was something about Chile that both intrigued her and reflected her passions about food and life.

What made Chilean cuisine so unique, she learned, was not its cultural purity, but its use of freshly grown and locally produced ingredients, its celebration of the
land’s bounty, from the fruits of the fertile Central Valley to the vineyards that thrive in Chile’s cool, dry climate.

Now, 12 years after she settled into her adopted homeland, Van Waerebeek cooks, entertains and celebrates like a native Chilean, paying homage to the traditional while opening her kitchen to global influences. This was evident when the chef paid a visit to the Publix Apron’s cooking school in Boca Raton recently to offer a cooking demonstration.

Read the full story