Brie-Almond Appetizer

Camembert Le Châtelain is an excellent example, with a recipe that is true to the original. It is succulent, ripe, rich and creamy. Only gently pasteurized at moderate temperatures, Camembert Le Châtelain retains most of the authentic flavors and qualities of the raw-milk cheese you can buy only in France. Excellent served with light reds from the Loire Valley or champagne, in Normandy this cheese is paired with an apple liqueur called Calvados. Apples, Camembert and Normandy are inextricably linked. Norman dairy farms are peppered with apple trees that protect the rich soil. In fact, some people claim to be able to taste a hint of apple beneath the creamy suppleness of fresh Camembert.

Novices beware: this authentic Camembert is aromatic!

• Made from pasteurized cow's milk.
• Photo depicts whole 8.8 oz. form of cheese.
• Best enjoyed within seven days of delivery.

Conversation with Sam Calagione & Marnie Old
Authors of He Said Beer, She Said Wine

MARNIE: Sam and I first met when we were doing trade tastings. We got to talking and found we didnÂ’t quite see eye-to-eye about which beverage was the best choice to partner with great food. We started playing around with arguing about which was better, and at a certain point decided we needed to take it to the public to settle the question. We began a series of dinners where our guests would enjoy a wine and a beer with the same course and cast a ballot to decide which partnered better. We called these dinners "Beer is from Mars, Wine is from Venus," and they were tremendously popular.

SAM: I think itÂ’s indicative of how close the worlds of beer and wine really are in the context of food, because every single night the winner was decided by a single course. And in every situation we had beer people voting for wine, and wine people voting for beer. WeÂ’re passionate about championing our respective beverage of choice, but one of our main goals is to make beer people more comfortable choosing wines, and wine people more comfortable understanding beer. And, to get both sides more comfortable understanding the breadth of choices within the two worlds.

In He Said Beer, She Said Wine, you give great tips for making beer and wine choices to go with everything from pizza to crème brulee. Can you offer some foolproof advice for choosing a bottle at our next meal?

MARNIE: The first tip is that if youÂ’re enjoying it, itÂ’s good. ThereÂ’s a lot of discomfort, especially with wine, about ordering the "right" thing. ThatÂ’s really not so important. ItÂ’s about doing what you enjoy. I couldnÂ’t tell you whether you prefer key lime pie over chocolate cake, and yet people think that thereÂ’s a right choice and a wrong choice with wine. ItÂ’s more about whatÂ’s happening that day. WhatÂ’s your mood? Is it summer or winter? Is it a special occasion, or is it a relaxed barbeque in the back yard? ItÂ’s better to think about wine as sauce on the side. WeÂ’d never put the same sauce on everything we eat, everyday. The same is true with beverages.

Sam, you mentioned that at the outset you were surprised to discover how much beer and wine actually have in common. How does beer compare to wine?

SAM: The major difference, of course, is that beer is better than wine. But, the simplest comparison would be to say that lagers are more like white wines, in that theyÂ’re more mellow and refined, and ales are more like red wines, in that theyÂ’re more robust and intense.

Does the rule of drinking white wine with seafood and red wine with red meat still apply?

MARNIE: Something we all have tremendously good instincts for is the idea of putting lighter, more delicate and more subtly flavored beverages with lighter, more delicate food. ItÂ’s also the first decision that any sommelier makes in pairing for a particular dinner. To say that as a hard and fast rule white wine should be paired with white meat and red wine with red meats is something that I think needs to be revisited. ItÂ’s a sound guideline, based in science and experience; however, it is possible to drink very well pairing white wines with red meats and red wines with fish. That said, there is a fundamental difference in the fermentation process that leads this pattern to be more or less true most of the time. Tannin, a property found in red wine, is something we feel on the palate as a tacky, drying sensation. That can lead to a bit of a challenge when pairing with low-fat dishes and seafood.

What makes cheese such a great beverage partner?

MARNIE: Most wines arenÂ’t designed to impress you on the first sip. TheyÂ’re designed to be food partners, to have their acidity softened by salt, and to have their intensity and tannin softened by fat. Cheese is dominated flavor-wise by fat and salt, the exact two properties that are needed to balance out wine.

SAM: As Marnie said, many wines werenÂ’t designed to taste good on their first sip. On the other hand, beer is meant to taste great on the first sip, the second sip and the third pint. But, that doesnÂ’t mean that itÂ’s any less food-friendly. And, cheese is a great place to start. The carbonation in beer acts as an exfoliant. It clears the palate between bites, whereas wine without carbonation tends to bounce off the cheese and go down your throat without intermingling. The overlap in the world of cheese and beer is also really obvious. Wonderful beer producers like Chimay in Belgium make their own in-house cheese, and Maytag blue cheese is made by the Maytag family, who own the pioneering microbrewery Anchor in San Francisco.

Are there any foods that are notoriously difficult to pair with beverages?

MARNIE: Artichokes are challenging vegetables for the sommelier to work with. They’re also the darling of every chef from here to Hawaii. There’s a compound in artichokes that confuses taste buds into perceiving all flavor sensations as sweet. After you eat them, everything else tastes saccharine. There’s no question that wines don’t taste true to their real flavors when dealing with artichokes in high quantities. Certain wine styles can handle this better than others, though. Light-bodied, un-oaked white wines like Grüner Veltliner from Austria work particularly well.

SAM: I think itÂ’s ironic that wine has all these Achilles heels, like artichokes and asparagus. ThereÂ’s really no problem with these foods when it comes to beer. IÂ’d pair artichokes with a dark, malt beer like a milk stout or porter. While artichokes donÂ’t tend to work very well with the vegetal components of hoppy beers like pilsners or I.P.A.s, those beers would work well with asparagus.

Assuming an audience of non-specialists, Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. For the most part, he succeeds. His language reflects a deep passion for science and a gift for translating concepts into poetic images. When explaining, for example, the inability to see the higher dimensions inherent in string theory, Greene writes: "We don't see them because of the way we seeÂ…like an ant walking along a lily padÂ…we could be floating within a grand, expansive, higher-dimensional space."

For Greene, Rhodes Scholar and professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, speculative science is not always as thorough and successful. His discussion of teleportation, for example, introduces and then quickly tables a valuable philosophical probing of identity. The paradoxes of time travel, however, are treated with greater depth, and his vision of life in a three-brane universe is compelling and--to use his description for quantum reality--"weird."

In the final pages Greene turns from science fiction back to the fringes of science fact, and he returns with rigor to frame discoveries likely to be made in the coming decades. "We are, most definitely, still wandering in the jungle," he concludes. Thanks to Greene, though, some of the underbrush has been cleared. --Patrick O'Kelley

• Material: 100% Organic cotton
• Waist: Belt loops
• Pockets: 2 Front, 2 back
• Fly: Button
• Recommended Use: Casual