"The Post's new wine columnists, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, won
the prestigious 2007 Cookbook of the Year award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals for their reference book, WHAT TO DRINK WITH WHAT YOU EAT (Bulfinch, 2006). Page and Dornenburg, who live in New York City, were awarded the honor Saturday night at the IACP's Awards Gala in Chicago.
Their book also won top honors in the Wine, Beer or Spirits category."
— The Washington Post (April 18, 2007)

WHAT to DRINK with WHAT you EAT
is Named 2007 IACP "Cookbook of the Year" and
Wins 2007 IACP Award as Best Book on Wine, Beer or Spirits

"Winners in four categories were announced last night at the International Association of Culinary Professionals' gala dinner at the Hilton Chicago. Readers may be most interested in the cookbook awards, chosen from nearly 500 entries from around the world in 13 categories. Cookbook of the Year was WHAT TO DRINK WITH WHAT YOU EAT:
The Definitive Guide to Pairing Food with Wine, Beer, Spirits, Coffee, Tea — Even Water — Based on Expert Advice from America's Best Sommeliers, by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. Michael Sand edited the book for Bulfinch Press.
The book also snagged the wine, beer or spirits category prize."
—Robin Mather Jenkins, The Chicago Tribune (April 15, 2007)

Dear Friends,

This past Friday night, we found ourselves in bed recovering from what we believe was a mild case of food poisoning, wondering if we'd even feel up to getting on a plane the next morning to head to Chicago for the IACP Cookbook Awards.

So it was more than a little surreal to find ourselves 24 hours later on stage at the Chicago Hilton receiving our first-ever IACP Cookbook Award for WHAT TO DRINK WITH WHAT YOU EAT as 2007's Best Book on Wine, Beer or Spirits.

But that turned out to be nothing, compared to how surreal it felt to hear ourselves called to the stage yet again — this time, to accept the award for WHAT TO DRINK WITH WHAT YOU EAT as the 2007 IACP Cookbook of the Year.

Previous winners of the "Cookbook of the Year" award include such as legendary books as The New York Times International Cookbook by Craig Claiborne (1971); James Beard's Theory and Practice of Good Cooking (1977); Julia Child & Company (1978); La Methode by Jacques Pepin (1979); Guiliano Bugialli's Foods of Italy (1984); The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum (1988); Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen (1997); Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison (1998); Desserts by Dorie Greenspan and Pierre Hermé (1999); and The French Laundry Cookbook (2000).

As authors, it's unusual for us to find ourselves without words. But there are truly no words that would allow us to express the depth of our shock, amazement, and gratitude.

Our heartfelt thanks to the IACP and the IACP Cookbook Awards Committee for this incredible recognition for our book WHAT TO DRINK WITH WHAT YOU EAT. We are awed to see it join the company of previous "Cookbook of the Year" winners and hope that it opens the eyes of even more readers to the pleasures awaiting them through accompanying what they eat with a synergistic beverage that has the power to elevate an ordinary meal to something extraordinary.

And our equally heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to making this book what it is, including all the sommeliers and other pairing experts who so generously shared their time and insights with us; our photographer Michael Sofronski whose gorgeous photography brought our words to life; the talented people at Bulfinch Press / Little, Brown, especially our editors Karen Murgolo and Michael Sand; and the best pairing expert we know: our agent Janis Donnaud, who paired us up with them.

We reserve our biggest thanks of all for Susan Bulkeley Butler, author of the wonderful book Become the CEO of You, Inc. (and about whom General H. Norman Schwarzkopf wrote, "Susan, there was never a doubt in my mind how successful you already were or how successful you would become"), to whom WHAT TO DRINK WITH WHAT YOU EAT is dedicated. The road of life is never easy, and each of us needs someone who believes in us and supports us, even (or especially!) when we lose faith in circumstances or in ourselves. The first woman professional and partner at a Big 6 accounting firm who retired as the most senior woman partner at the global consultancy Accenture, Susan is a pioneering executive who has mentored more individuals than anyone else we know. We are privileged to count her as our mentor, coach, and very dear friend.

For a list of all of this year's IACP Cookbook Award winners, click here. Our congratulations to all.

THE WINE CENTURY CLUB: In our column in today's Washington Post entitled "For Oenophiles, A Holy Grail," we pose the question:

How many different wine grape varieties have you tasted? We'll bet that your list includes chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon, two of the world's most popular wine grapes. It might also include some or all of the other four that make up the 'noble' grapes, so named for their use in creating the finest wines: merlot, pinot noir, Riesling and sauvignon blanc. But that's a small fraction of the thousands of grape varieties that exist.

The Wine Century Club was created [by Steve and Deborah DeLong] two years ago to encourage wine lovers to explore the diverse array of wines around the globe. The sole criterion for membership -- which is free, and earns you a proverbial "certificate suitable for framing" from the club's London headquarters -- is to have tasted more than 100 grape varieties. The club's online application featuring a checklist of 185 varieties can be found at http://delongwine.com/century.html. Although it has been downloaded more than 6,000 times, only 3.5 percent have actually been submitted.

We hope you'll join us in tasting at least 100 grape varieties -- and pushing yourself out of any wine rut you might find yourself in. E-mail us at Dornenburg@aol.com about your experiences, and we'll share comments in a future column.

Membership is on the honor system, but beware: The club's Web site threatens a curse of the Roman wine god Bacchus on cheaters.

Note: You can read the rest of our column on The Washington Post's Web site here.

"I probably get food poisoning more than anybody in Los Angeles. Every month, they have a list in the paper of all the restaurants that have been closed by the health department. Typically, I've eaten at two-thirds of them."
—Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Gold, as quoted in our book DINING OUT (1998)

CONGRATULATIONS TO JONATHAN GOLD: When researching and writing our book on restaurant criticism DINING OUT a decade ago, we had the pleasure of interviewing critic Jonathan Gold. He invited us to join him for lunch, and when we asked how we would recognize him, he assured us, "Don't worry -- I'll be the only other Caucasian there." He was indeed.

At restaurants that are not looking to make a name for themselves, few people are on the lookout for a critic. We met Jonathan Gold for lunch at Yazmin, a Malaysian restaurant in Los Angeles where we had to walk by a huge, framed review with his byline on it before passing through the dining room. "This place is one of my favorites," Gold told us. "I've written about it a lot, and I have at least one piece in the window, maybe two. They don't have any idea who I am, do they?" (They clearly didn't.)

"But I don't think I should be treated differently, and I don't like it when it happens," Gold says. "One time, I decided to go to [a top-rated Los Angeles restaurant] on the spur of the moment, and they didn't know who we were. [Gold's wife is LA Weekly editor Laurie Ochoa.] They seated us at a crummy table by the bar, and the food was several steps lower than it was when we'd had 'V.I.P.' written on our ticket. That's never a good sign." [Excerpts from our 1998 book DINING OUT]

While sipping drinks out of fresh coconuts with their tops hacked off, Gold amused and amazed us with tales of his intrepid reporting on restaurants. He told us of the process of discovering new spots, which he did by driving down virtually every street of Los Angeles, looking for new storefronts that opened.

And he won our personal award for bravery for his answer to our question regarding the weirdest things he'd ever eaten when he responded -- without batting an eyelash -- "braised goat penis, Filipino duck eggs three days from hatching, pig uterus, and the testicles of a bull that had fallen in the ring to the matador."

Jonathan Gold believes that food is the most interesting subject there is. "It encompasses everything there is to write about," he observes. "I'd like to read more excitement about food and more actual awareness of where the reviewer is, though 'social consciousness' is probably the wrong term. Too many reviewers go to a restaurant with blinders on and see nothing but what is on the plate in front of them, or whether a waiter smiled at them or not."

After pioneers such as Gael Greene of New York magazine -- arguably history's most-imitated restaurant critic -- helped to pave the way, restaurant criticism started coming into its own in the 1990s. In DINING OUT, we featured our conversations with three Pulitizer Prize-winning critics (of architecture, media and music) on how they would approach reviewing restaurants. We wondered whether any food critic might ever win the award, believing the writing of the best critics -- including Ruth Reichl, then of The New York Times -- to be worthy.

In educating his readers, Jonathan Gold says, "The two things I do well are to evoke a sense of community, and to give a description. You can be as pornographic with a description of a stew as Henry Miller ever was with anything."

We had to wait another decade, but it finally happened: On Monday, LA Weekly's Jonathan Gold became the first food critic in history to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

Congratulations, Jonathan, on what is not only a milestone victory for you personally, but also for the food world as it seeks broader acceptance of its cultural relevance among the intelligentsia.

Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page
527 Third Ave.  Suite 130
New York, NY  10016
Phone:  (212) 642-5870   
Email: Dornenburg@aol.com
Web: www.becomingachef.com