A little while ago, Taz mentioned Alpana Singh in a post on influential desi women under 30. I recently discovered that Alpana, in addition to being the youngest person ever to pass the Master Sommelier exam, hosts a show called Check, Please! on Chicago Public Television. AND she has a book out: Alpana Pours: About Being a Woman, Loving Wine, and Having Great Relationships. The general vibe she’s going for in the book might be described as “Shiraz and the City”; the idea for it came from watching couples order wines at upscale restaurants:
Singh cringes when she thinks about the drop-dead gorgeous woman who dined at Everest with an equally great-looking date. The guy proceeded to order a $490 bottle of Champagne — and the unsure woman asked for a Diet Coke. That’s when she knew it was time to birth Alpana Pours.
“I may not be a relationship expert, but I saw five years of relationships” by advising couples on wine. “It was like [having] ringside seats,” says the Monterey, Calif., native.(link)
To sum up (ladies, are you listening?), Alpana declares: “Looking super hot in a really expensive dress can be immediately undermined if you order a diet cola.” (The book also has chapters with titles like, “Pairings: Wine, Hooking Up, and Dating” and “What Wines Go With Bingeing?”) While I’m definitely not the demographic Alpana is, um, catering to, I guess I’m fine with it as long as no one is serving Tunatinis anywhere, ever.There is also a detailed profile of Alpana Singh at Chicago Reader. Along with some other choice quotes from the book, there’s some stuff about her background:
Her father and mother, born in Fiji, emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-70s just before she was born. As it turned out, her mother’s papers weren’t valid, so she returned with her baby to Fiji for three years before the family finally settled in northern California. Singh’s parents, who worked as a waitress and a cook and never drank wine, were very traditional. “When I read Jhumpa Lahiri’s books, I almost cried,” says Singh. “Trying to explain to your parents things that happened to you in the Western world—you really do live a double life. You go to school and you’re talking about New Kids on the Block—‘Oh my god, Jordan is so cute!’—and then you come home and sit down for Indian prayer and learn how to cook and clean, how to be a proper bride. I think that’s where a lot of my push back comes from: I’m not going to do what you guys think I’m going to do. This is not me; this is crap.”(link)
Two thoughts: 1) Fijian desis are a force to be reckoned with. And 2) Jhumpa Lahiri shows up in the strangest places, doesn’t she?
There are more wine tips from Alpana Singh in this little Chicago Sun-Times piece. Two in particular caught my eye:
Older isn’t always better: Singh compares aging wine to a relationship: If it’s good from the start, it only gets better; if it’s rocky at the beginning, time makes it worse. Many good wines are meant to be drunk young. “Otherwise, while you’re patiently waiting for ‘Mr. Right,’ you may inadvertently be letting ‘Mr. Right Now’ get away.”
Get over the “Pretty Boy” phase: Nothing’s wrong with Chardonnay, but don’t you want to move beyond? Singh calls wines like Chardonnay “pretty boys” that “don’t ask you to think…Ask yourself, ‘Is the thrill still there?'” Later, you’ll likely develop an appetite for sophisticates like Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling and Sangiovese.
(link)
Wine as a metaphor for dating, or dating as a metaphor for wine? (Admittedly, neither are particularly relevant to me these days: the only bottles I’m scrutinizing are Dr. Brown’s!)
She is a wine expert. Read and learn. The rest, well, isn’t all that important. Knowing wine and knowing relationships are two different things. One is relatively simpler, and it isn’t relationships for sure.
SM Intern,
Help me out with this dot thing. I don’t see an extra button and I tried the apostrophe thing. I haven’t tried on my pc yet, but I can’t do it on a mac. help!
It’s all a matter of a opinion and what one finds “proper” or fitting, I guess, but seriously, if you took a date to a swanky restaurant and she did any of the following… a) consistently chewed with her mouth open b) waved her fork in the air to punctuate her conversation c) ordered a tall glass of milk with her lamb chops
… would you not make the same kind of comment made about the woman ordering a diet coke along with her date’s $490 champagne? It’s all a matter of degree, eh?
Living in San Francisco, you meet a lot of self appointed Wine/Foodie people. They gush about this restuarant or that or seasonal product (which I kind of have to agree with, because CA has the BEST fresh produce)blah, blah, blah…
At the end of the day, I’m eating the food I like to eat and not feeling inferior for loving Nizario’s pizza at 2 am.
It’s all relative. I can tell what bad wine is, but the medium range and up is all the same to me. But I know good karela shak when I taste it, it’s all about the ghor…
Alpana’s book is for the above mentioned Wine/Foodie peeps that abound in SF because that is what is important to them. What’s important to me is what beer should I drink when it’s raining because it’s bujia (pakora) and beer weather (according to my cousin).
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Hmm. Gewurztraminer is a bit of an acquired taste and sometimes can be a little over the top. I’d serve it with some Indian dishes but as a failsafe, I’d rather go with an Alsace riesling or pinot blanc. Alsace is key for the riesling as most German rieslings and pretty much every American one will be too sweet. Another white varietal that goes reasonably well with desi food is viognier, which produces some expensive (and very good) white Cotes-du-Rhone, and some OK cheapie wines from Languedoc. Another way to go is whites from Northwest Spain – from the albarino and other grapes – lots of interesting stuff all the way from the Basque country to Galicia.
Similarly there are quite a few red options. As with anything else, the perfect pairing depends on what you are serving – I’d serve a different wine with a lamb biryani than I would with a veg curry. Having aid all that, one rule of thumb I always follow is that when the chilies get above a certain level of heat, you gotta go with beer all the way.
Deaking Estate makes some good cabernet…that is not all fruit but has layers with some tobacco. Their 2003 Cabernet was pretty good at about $10 a bottle.
I think bits of the Chicago Reader article debunk her snobbery just a little, e.g.:
“ItÂ’s totally fine to drink cheap, cute-animal-branded Australian Shiraz, she says, and if you like your wine so cold you canÂ’t taste it, well, then thatÂ’s what you like.”
“…when asked about the importance of a wineÂ’s price, she says, ‘Well, the cheaper it is, the more likely I am to buy it.'”
Yeah, an Asahi can from Arco and a couple of papads (nuked 5.30 minutes on a kitchen towel) after a long day ….
..
I think Gerwurztraminer, Reisling, Pinot Noir, Pinot Grigio, some Zinfandel all go well with Indian food. But, that’s just me.
I understand wine snobs. I’m a sushi snob. It’s a curse and an addiction. YouÂ’re compelled to spend huge amounts of money to taste what is, to others, simply inconsequential. You sense things that others don’t and wonder why. You can’t help but think theyÂ’re inferior and don’t want to associate with them. It’s like you’re listening to a symphony and they’re hearing Brittney Spears.
It’s snobbery. But it’s real, not affected or pretentious. I honestly loathe you simpletons.
If the article was written about Manju 😉
Goan sausage snob here 🙂 the type my grandma dried by hanging them between two chairs.
Yeah, I don’t really read her as a snob, although I agree that the Diet Coke comment was uncalled for, and also with the general observation someone made that her book participates in the maneuver of creating an anxiety and then selling a service to remedy it. But in this case I’ll hate the game and not the player. Her advocacy for cheap wine is a good sign.
When I worked in a wine store way back in the day, I used to take pride in coming up with an apt yet unexpected wine for the customer’s meal and always rigorously below their maximum price. (It’s deeply annoying when you ask for a wine in the $10-15 range and the first thing they show you is $16.99) Plus that way I got to hear a lot of cool dinner menus.
alpana could be snobby, or she could not be, i have no idea. but the way i read her comment re: diet coke is that the unsure woman picked the diet coke because she didn’t know what she would like because she didn’t have the knowledge/expertise, and therefore her book. as a person who didn’t grow up around drinkers and now having to go to professional dinners a couple of times a week, this book can be a great resource to find out what wines go with my taste (not to say i would order wine every time out or even if i didn’t feel like it.) and regardless of her attitude, props to her for gaining master sommelier status at such a young age and being part of an exclusive expert group.
I cringe when I see a drop-dead woman reading…Star Magazine in the grocery store. I usually move to a different checkout aisle…..
What? I cant be a snob about what a chick reads?
Manju!!!
Listen, I’ve got your back on the sushi thing. Once I got a taste for fantastic sushi, I couldn’t convince myself to love the mediocre stuff. It will get me by in a pinch, but I’ll be craving my top-shelf toro and negihama the whole time.
But when it comes to other kinds of foods, I can be pretty uninformed. I think that if I won the lottery, I would dedicate a full five years to learning the nuances of every food genre. And then I would be very fat. And happy.
…unless it is a handroll.
95 Still can’t get those dots…I’m typing on a mac at work, does that make a difference? Get Camino. Life will be good. Safari Blows.
BS – You can be a snob about what a chick reads, but remember, waiting in line to check out your groceries is boring. And those magazines are up there just asking to be picked up and read while the person in front of you who has 22 items instead of the 10 or less is paying by check.
You have to wait and see if she actually buys it, then move on.
BTW, Beer is in Aisle 6 and Fat Tire is on sale.
BevMo rocks. Very good selection of Belgian brews. For Pinot Noir lovers, I recommend the Louis Jadot Bourgone Pinot Noir.
Reading that was cool…all husbands should have such adoring wives.
I think it’s time for a Sepia wine tasting meetup. Wine and cheese. And Ladoos. Who’s down for it? Tell the bunker to get them going cross-country.
as you drink the wine eat the cheese and laddoos, those prefering their diet coke will bring their ever famous thums up, limca, and goldspot 😉
Chick Pea,
I second that, but what about double cola?
p.s. totally loved gold spot 🙂
One more thing… I’m going to bring a snickers and eat it with a knife and fork a la george costanza.
Amitabh
Thanks:) It’s all his little quirks/eccentricities that make me love him like crazy.
hmm.. i never had double cola.. i did have um… citra..so refreshing…and campa cola.. you know now it’s getting harder and harder to find goldspot.. rumor was it is no more.. (sigh..) damn coke bought it out..and alas the fanta fanta fanta girls come to be
p.s. not a fan of thums up…such a gross aftertaste and smell..so not a cola..
i prefer eating m&m’s with a spoon..do that as the appetizer next to your snickers ;)…
Forget wine, goldspot, or limca.
It’s all about the Sosyo baby! (Those brave enough to have tried it, Godspeed.)
Shouldn’t that L be small case ?
SemiDesi Laddoos also go well w/ the original Frap.
“Laddoos also go well w/ the original Frap.”
haha…i think that would mean that the night would end at taco bell.
I think Alpana is being a tad bit pretentious. If Diet Coke is on the menu of this fancy-shmancy restaurant, why can’t the poor lady order it? Not everyone appreciates the taste of, or even drinks, wine. It’d be one thing to ask for a mango lassi at an expensive French restaurant, but what’s wrong with Coke? And perhaps the lady was unsure about whether she wanted to drink that night, not unsure as to what wine she wanted to order. I assume the lady was looking at the menu in front of her before asking for a Diet Coke. Hey, if it’s on the menu, and she’s willing to pay for it, more power to her!
Alpana does not seem to frown upon the ordering of a coke because she is a snob in my opinion. My read is that she feels that the woman in this case was intimidated by the fact that her date ordered a $500 bottle of liquor and that she ordered a coke because of the shock. I think that Alpana would prefer that women be empowered and not be shocked by such a thing and instead order and equally “shocking” beverage.
What Aplana and the rest of the commenters here haven’t even considerd is that perhaps the woman ordered a coke because she wasn’t really digging her date and didn’t want to put out at the end of the night. We all know that a $500 bottle of anything MUST come with proper “repayment.” 😉
Manju,
Sushi snob? Do you eat sushi that still moves???
Personally, I’m a grilled cheese snob. And a chili cheese fries snob.
Sorry kids, don’t drink and can’t contribute to the thread- I do think that alpana isn’t trying to be a snob, she’s just trying to read a book that caters the Sex in the City crowd that bought “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Same book, just using wine as a metaphor.
Oh wow, I just assumed it was a Kansas beer since the only place I’ve ever found it is in small town Kansas. Don’t see it where I live in NYC.
Taz:
i once ate a live lobster at blue ribbon sushi in Soho, nyc. animal rights activits put an end to the practice. i no longer go to blue ribbon, for the snobby reasons ennis alludes to–it’s become a place for the california rollers. nice links.
Dude, You name the city, you can buy Fat Tire Beer. Who knows even Delhi, Mumbai?
Now back to high dollar drinks
this makes no sense. why was she unsure. all she had to do was drink the champagne. i think abhi is right, she knew exactly what she was doing. she didn’t want to repay.
We all know that a $500 bottle of anything MUST come with proper “repayment.” 😉
Yikes!
The talk of soda snobbery got me thinking. About the only restaurant where I have a favorite drink is Pyramid Ale Brewery in Berkeley, where I always get the house blackberry soda. It’s not the very fact that a drink is soda or non-alcoholic that makes it uninteresting, its the standard execution. It is physically possible to make a non-intoxicating but complex and interesting drink that complements food and isn’t too sweet–but also rare. It takes some work–you’d have to brew it carefully and use a lot more ingredients, because the alcohol won’t leach the oils for you, and it’s easier to make it fresh because you can’t just bottle it and let the yeast finish the job and the ethanol preserve it. If you want to avoid serving decorated sugar (or splenda) water, you really have to put some thought and work into providing other flavors. It’s a much less commercial endeavor, b/c fresh is better, and so it doesn’t get any PR play. But it seems worth pursuing. At a dinner party I once had an incredibly good concoction with papaya and fresh ginger root that complemented the meal wonderfully and was very complex–as you rolled it over your tongue different parts of it popped out.
But if I have to choose, I’ll choose the good cook over the fancy-restaurant-customer anyway. 🙂
Yep, I drink it all the time.
too funny dj poonjabi… however i prefer this to drink.. i recently just tried it(yes, late bloomer..) hell i endorse it since it works well in between an all nighter cramming for exams..and 4 of them in one night do WONDERS…they even have an art exhibit dedicated to it..a sight i will be seeing this weekend..and heck..it even has incorporated itself in my dream mobile ;)..
Damn you muntineers. My car automatically steered itself to Trader Joes. I HAD to buy hummus, wine, and flat bread. But that wasn’t the end of it. What sits a few stores down from Trade Joes? BevMo!
I walked out with some trappist ales and a german lager.
Damn that car, it as a mind of its own.
plus the guys trying to hard. who orders a bottle of champagne, nevermind a $490 bottle, on a date? the chick got scared that he was moving too fast. she woulda fallen for abhi’s two buck chuck move.
My name is Manju, and I am a Sepiaholic.
Sigh, Manju, despite all my rants and raves against wine snobbery, I will have to back you on the sushi thing. I find a HUGE difference in taste between cheap sushi and somewhat expensive sushi. The most expensive sushi meal I’ve had is at Yoshida in Pasadena, CA. It came to about $60 after several rounds at the bar, and their sushi pizza is simply orgasmic. This is definitely not the highest you can pay for good sushi, but I’ve found that sub-$30 sushi meals never have that taste. I still have to try really expensive sushi to see if it gets any better.
However, with sushi, I do think there’s a definite, more objective factor, involved, the freshness of the fish. Beyond that, I don’t really know what makes the expensive sushi better than the cheaper one. Would be glad to be enlightened.
I think that with everything that can be bought, it gets better in quality the more you pay — upto a point. After that, it’s pretty much all about the brand-name, and the associated status. The quality-price ratio suffers from diminishing returns. It seems to be true for food, clothes, wines and almost everything else.
you’re right to sit at the bar. sushi should be eaten right away and not allowed to sit on a plate for too long. a lot of it is the rice, the great chefs make a new batch evry 30mins or so, and it is boiled in purified water with precise proprtions of red and white vinegar. also. the wasabi should be freshly grated, the pre-made pasty type overpowers. if the sushi pieces are large, run away. try going omakase.
as far as the fish is concerned, freshness should be a given. the great chefs know how to choose the best fish among the freshest. for example, tuna should not have struggled for too long when being hunted, and the great chefs know how to tell. texture is everything, a lot of it is in how it is cut. the best restaurants will have like 6 variations of tuna fattiness. variety is key, most sushi restaurnats can’t get their hands on or can’t be bothered with some of the best fish. one sign of greatness is no pre-cooked fish: ie the eel is cooked in front of you, the crab is real not the processed type, the lobster and shrimp is alive 5 mins b/f you put it in your mouth. if the chef is doing this, you know you’re in for something special. also, the great (traditional) ones don’t offer any rolls besides tekka-make.
Sushi used to freak me out till about 3 years ago. Now I convinced even the cafe at L’Oreal to make it and teach everyone how to and have become quite the expert at it! You know Haru has excellent sushi for a fairly inexpensive place without the intimidation factor of Morimoto or Nobu.
Best best sushi ever…a day trip out into the South China Sea with a client and his family in a 60 foot schooner. The men caught the fish an the women made the sushi while the fish was still moving and you pretty much ate it within 2 minutes. It was pretty incredible. Too bad at the end of the day with a little too much sushi and a little too much sea air and way too much motion I lost almost all of it!!
Bhosad Nath (#23), awesome name!
sigh I wish I were a connoisseur of something. Maybe it’s just the bottom in me, but I think it’s hella sexy when a person really knows his/her shit. Seriously, it even makes Manju sexy (Abhi- sorry yaar).
I’m sort of a boob connoisseur. Does that count? No, it’s not high culture enough, and you can’t really eat or… nevermind. New Years resolution: Become a foodie so I can be a culture snob and say sexy things like Siddhartha and Manju.
Anyway, I’m proud of Alpana, especially after this bit. That’s pretty damn impressive. Get it grrrl snap snap