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John Capone

Content strategy/ writing and editing

John Capone

Probably on deadline.

Food Wine and Drink

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Preston Farm & Winery

A serendipitous sequence of luck, magic, mystery, chaos and belief brought Lou Preston to the place he is today. Which is, essentially, where he started—and, at the same time, far from it.
Edible Marin and Wine Country Link to Story
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That unsold bottle of Merlot is probably winding up in your gas tank

The first thing you notice is the smell. An acrid eau-de-wet-garbage mixed with electrical fire and burning diesel. Mad Max meets scratch and sniff. Breweries and distilleries have a distinct aroma, like moist bread. The backrooms of gin distilleries can fill with the scent of cardamom and juniper and smell like a Silk Road spice cart.
Quartz Link to Story
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Drinkers Without Borders

Wine country restaurants are (finally!) taking their wine lists way, way beyond Napa and Sonoma. It sounds like blasphemy, but it’s true: Finding an adventurous wine list in wine country is shockingly difficult. Laboring under the misapprehension that regional wines alone are of interest to their customers, Napa and Sonoma restaurants all too often stick to the usual suspects—mega-production “local” wines easily available from their distributor.
San Francisco Magazine Link to Story
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Hungarian Wines Are Getting Their Shot at the Spotlight

Decades of Communist rule didn’t kill Hungary’s centuries-old winemaking tradition, but the country’s reputation for mass-produced, sickly sweet wines nearly did. Today, however, that’s finally changing.
San Francisco Magazine Link to Story
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Is California Bubbly Finally Coming into Its Own?

California’s sparkling wines are growing—in both number and quality. And they might finally get their due. Throughout the country, the popularity of sparkling wine is surging skyward like a cork shot from a bottle. And here in the Bay Area, a growing number of producers are competing with champagne houses to go straight to your head.
San Francisco Magazine Link to Story
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Coming to The End: Montauk's Indian Summer Dies Out

The realization that development has hit the last possible tract of land at the end of an island is like finishing an eight ball at 4am and coming to grips with the fact that there's no more left, no hope of getting any more, nowhere to go, and the sun’s coming up. Montauk, or The End, might just be earning its nickname at last.
BlackBook Link to Story
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Bait and Switch

Sometimes a toothfish is just a toothfish. And sometimes it’s a sea bass. Not really. It’s just a toothfish. A study released in February by conservation group Oceana found that, among other shocking revelations, 59 percent of America’s “tuna” isn’t. You’ve likely seen some of the reaction in the media.
Long Island Pulse Magazine Link to Story
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WINE of the WEEK: 2012 Vietti Nebbiolo Perbacco

Barolo is not for those seeking instant gratification. That wine made from the Nebbiolo grape, like some of the old-line winemakers who produce it in the region, has a reputation for surliness—but unlike those particular Piemontese, the notoriously tannic wine mellows with age. These wines give Nebbiolo appreciators another, often more approachable, way to enjoy the fruits of these protean vines grown in their most renown region, and they give producers wines to offer that do not require 10 years to tame.
Robb Report Link to Story
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Red Hook Winery

Dressed in throwback running shoes and shorts, Chris Nicolson looks more like a guy about to go for a jog with Prefontaine than who he actually is: One of the most important young winemakers in New York. He plunges a long glass pipette (or “thief”) into a barrel and then offers a sample of the still-maturing blend of riesling and sauvignon blanc destined to become the house wine at Momofuku.
Long Island Pulse Magazine Link to Story
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Prime 103 Does Owe a Debt - to Angelo and Maxie's

The concept for Prime 103, Ed "Jean Luc" Kleefield's new steakhouse and lounge on the Montauk Highway, isn't borrowed from a Miami Beach rival, despite recent accusations. Its inspiration, it turns out, is much closer to home.
Grub Street Link to Story
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Former Roadside Wreck Home to New Hamptons BBQ

It has taken a little longer than expected, but Townline BBQ, the new Hamptons joint from the group that runs Nick & Toni's, is nearly ready to open its doors. The restaurant occupies the space that housed Alison on the Beach, which had to be vacated because it was close to being condemned.
Grub Street Link to Story
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The Joy of Plywood

Plywood boards are the green shoots of the restaurant world. Plywood and a sign that a favorite restaurant is moving in is the happy counterpart to those sad-sack save-Joe's signs that go up as the last dying embers of a beloved eatery go out. The fall generally brings more of the former and fewer of the latter. And there has been reason to get ebullient over the sign of plywood lately.
NBC New York Link to Story

About

John Capone

John Capone is a writer and editor from New York currently based in Los Angeles. As a freelancer he's written for NYMag.com’s Grub Street, BlackBook, Radar, The Daily, Hemispheres, NBCNewYork.com, [wherever]: an out of place journal and many others.

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http://john-capone.com/