Wine Dine and Play: FDA

Showing posts with label FDA. Show all posts

Norovirus at the Olympics

February 20, 2018

By Sean Overpeck (CFE)

**A full article and index glossary of restaurants, wines, recipes and travel for

Wine Dine and Play are in the pages section above, or by following these links:

By Cuisine / By Country

Food Service Staff Need To Up There Game

The Pyeongchang, South Korean 2018 winter games started on February 9, but four days before the opening ceremony 32 workers were being treated for norovirus and were placed in quarantine, including 21 from the Civil Security Staff along with three foreigners according to the initial reports from the Associated Press. Five days after those first cases appeared, The Horeb Youth Center had 108 more cases with an additional 77 cases in the coastal city of Gangneung plus 59 in the mountain villages around Pyeongchang, bringing the total number to 158 cases. The main group of affected workers was security staff, resulting in the South Korean Government mobilizing the ROK Army to take the workers place as the Olympic organizers removed 1,200 personnel from their posts and quarantined them in their rooms after several dozens more tested positive.

Picture courtesy of Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images

By February 15, the number increased to 244 according to the Korean Centers for Disease Control and had spread to two Swiss athletes, and that both have been treated by the Swiss team’s doctors and no longer show symptoms of the highly contagious viral stomach flu. There's no current treatment for norovirus, but most people recover in one to three days. According to a statement from the Swiss delegation, the two cases are isolated. Both athletes were staying in Bokwang, not in the Olympic Village, and have had minimal contact with other athletes. Six months before the start of these games at the world athletics championships in London, 30 athletes from Germany to Botswana came down with norovirus, and several of those infected had to withdraw from their events, so Pyeongchang is far from being an isolated event for this outbreak.

After the February 15 report was released, American skier Mikaela Shiffrin vomited before her slalom run and said between runs that she might have a virus. At first, it was reported by the Korean news service Yonhap that the source of the norovirus was unknown, but investigators later traced part of the outbreak to contaminated water used in food preparation at the Horeb Youth Center. Christophe Dubi, the IOC's executive director for the Olympic Games, told reporters they are taking no risks to contain the outbreak and prevent it from spreading to more athletes or spectators. According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia some 685 million cases of norovirus per year are reported with 1.1 million in Great Britain alone killing 50,000 + people worldwide.

The norovirus

Working in the food service for the past twenty years, when I first read about this outbreak, I included it in the morning training meetings with the food service staff. Most are third-country nationals from India, Nepal, and the Philippines. We take issues like this very seriously, as we don't want to lose our jobs by making our clients sick. I had recently given them a week-long refresher training class on the second chapter of the ServSafe book covering the many forms of contamination and foodborne illnesses. So with the issues at the games, and the recent E. coli romaine lettuce outbreak in California and Canada, it was a hot topic for discussion and review. For example, in the United States alone, there are 48 million cases of foodborne illness annually (1 in 6 Americans) each year. These illnesses result in 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.

There are four ways food can become contaminated. They are biological, chemical, physical, and deliberate contaminations. Chemical contamination is caused by cleaning products, and pesticides getting mixed with food or having the food cooked in copper and zink pots. Physical contamination covers things like bugs, human hair, metal shards from a can, band-aids, fingernails and much more. Deliberate contamination is spread by terrorists, disgruntled former employees, or restaurant competitors. Under biological contamination where norovirus comes into play, there are four known biological pathogens from bacterial, parasite, fungi, and the dreaded virus. According to the FDA, CDC, and scientists at USAMRID, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, there are over forty types of biological contaminants out there that can spread to humans through food, and six have been singled out as highly contagious. Norovirus is one of these six. The others are Shigella, salmonella typhi, salmonella nontyphoidal, E. coli, and Hepatitis A.

What Is Norovirus, And How Did It Break Out at the Winter Olympics?

Norovirus is in a group of related viruses in the Caliciviridae family. Its spread through ingestion in the small intestine before being expelled in feces. Norovirus can be found in an infected person's feces even before they start feeling sick and two weeks or more after they feel better. Most norovirus outbreaks happen in food service settings according to the CDC. Like Hepatitis A, norovirus is commonly linked to ready-to-eat-food. Food workers who touch foods with their bare hands before serving are frequently the source. Also, any foods that are served raw or are handled after being cooked without the food service worker wearing gloves can become contaminated.

Causes

Methods of transmission include:

• Eating contaminated food

• Drinking contaminated water

• Touching your hand to your mouth after your hand has been in contact with a contaminated surface or
object

• Being in close contact with a person who has a norovirus infection

One main cause is not washing or not properly washing your hands after using the restroom, then touching the food with feces that may be on your fingers. The second most common is through a sewage pipe rupture which was the case when 529 people became sick with norovirus in 2009 after eating at Chef Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant The Fat Duck which was #3 on the worlds top 100 restaurants of the world list. Also in 2013 sixty-three diners at Noma by Chef René Redzepi who owned the #1 restaurant in the world were infected by norovirus. Both outbreaks were linked to mussels that had been nesting in an area near a broken sewage pipe. According to the CDC, norovirus causes inflammation of the stomach, the intestines or both. A person usually develops symptoms 12 to 48 hours after being exposed.

Signs and symptoms of norovirus infection include:

• Nausea

• Vomiting

• Abdominal pain or cramps

• Watery or loose diarrhea

• Malaise

• Low-grade fever

• Muscle pain

You may continue to shed virus in your feces for up to two weeks after recovery. Seek medical attention if you develop diarrhea that doesn't go away within several days. Also call your doctor if you experience severe vomiting, bloody stools, abdominal pain or dehydration.

Graph courtesy of Food Safety Magazine

Risk factors for becoming infected with norovirus include:

• Eating in a place where food is handled with unsanitary procedures

• Attending preschool or a child care center

• Living in close quarters, such as in nursing homes

• Staying in hotels, resorts, cruise ships or other destinations with many people in close quarters

• Having contact with someone who has norovirus infection

Prevention

Norovirus infection is highly contagious, and anyone can become infected more than once. To help prevent its spread:

• Wash your hands thoroughly, especially after using the toilet or changing a diaper.

• Avoid contaminated food and water, including food that may have been prepared by someone who was
sick.

• Wash fruits and vegetables before eating.

• Cook seafood thoroughly.

• Dispose of vomit and fecal matter carefully, to avoid spreading norovirus by air. Soak up material with
disposable towels, using minimal agitation, and place them in plastic disposal bags.

• Disinfect virus-contaminated areas with a chlorine bleach solution. Wear gloves.

• Stay home from work, especially if your job involves handling food. You may be contagious as long as
three days after your symptoms end. Children should stay home from school or childcare.

• Avoid traveling until signs and symptoms have ended.

The proper hand wash method - picture from ServSafe

In the end, if you are in food service no matter what area of the world you work, then wash your hands.
Follow the safety guidelines for food preparation. Wash fruits and vegetables correctly, keep foods at
the proper cooling and heated temperatures. If you're going to be in the news, then make it for a good news

story, not a norovirus story. If you don’t want to do the right thing, then don’t work in an area that can affect

peoples health.

Picture courtesy of ServSafe

Who is John Galt?

TTFN

Pretty In Pink - Carbon Monoxide In Meat

By Sean Overpeck (CFE)

**A full article and index glossary of restaurants, wines, recipes and travel for

Wine Dine and Play are in the pages section above, or by following these links:

By Cuisine / By Country

It is time for you're weekly run to the grocery store and to pick up some items for your weekend barbecue party. You have your chips and dip, beer, hamburger and hot dog buns, and now it is time for the meat.

Now if you are a foreigner and you visit the USA it is a mouth dropping shock, but to the average American shopper, it is nothing new. The brightest best-looking ground beef you can find at the cheapest price to make those hamburgers with, or even a bright red ribeye steak to grill is the one that Americans will buy. We are told that it is the best quality when its that color. But why is the meat so bright red? When I grew up and shopped with my parents they even told me to pick this meat over the brown colored meat. They told me that red was fresh and brown was old, and you can get sick from the older stuff. Besides that bright reed beef looks great as if it was just butchered that day doesn’t it? I Talk to a real butcher that owns a small shop competing with the big grocery store chains and he gave me a different story - a real story.

You will find that the meat was put into the big grocery display case days before if not longer. So how does it stay so red, bright, and beautiful? Most American consumers as I said earlier pay it no mind, while foreigners question it because, in most of their butcher grocery sections, they don’t see this. In America when you shop specifically at a small neighborhood butcher shop for your meats, then you know the story, and will not buy the grocery store meat on display. A small farm or a local butcher knows that this bright red meat is not a natural occurrence. Once meat becomes exposed to air, oxidation begins which gradually turns the red color of the meat to a more unappetizing brown or grey color within just a few days.

This never seems to happen to supermarket meat. The meat is uniformly red, not various shades of red, brown and grey. The facts are as follows, 70% of the meat sold in stores is treated with carbon monoxide to keep the meat a deceptively fresh looking red color.

Carbon monoxide is identified by the chemical symbol CO -- it is a molecule consisting of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom. This gas is colorless, odorless, tasteless, flammable and poisonous. According to its material safety data sheet, inhaling carbon monoxide may cause damage to the blood, lungs, cardiovascular system and central nervous system. An exposure to as little as 6.4 percent CO can cause convulsions, loss of consciousness and death in 30 minutes.

The industrialized meat industry (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations – CAFO) insists that treatment with carbon monoxide, called “modified atmosphere packaging” (MAP), is necessary due to the difficulty of keeping meat at the proper temperature while in grocery store coolers. Being in food service we know that meats need to be held at specific internal temperatures to avoid pathogens from growing and causing foodborne illnesses. In the retail sector, meat is not supposed to exceed 39° Fahrenheit (4° Celsius) at any time. For restaurants, the ServSafe standard is 41° Fahrenheit (5° Celsius). An increase of just a degree or two can result in a massive increase in bacterial growth.

This is where MAP came into play. The purpose of the MAP was to help manufacturers and packers/fillers of fruit and vegetables to choose the optimum packaging for their products to improve shelf life and quality of the product, as well as find a solution to the struggles of temperature consistency, and to reduce loss in the overall supply chain. It was invented in the 1970s rolling off of the use of Controlled Atmosphere Storage (CAS) which has been used from the 1930s by freighter ships transporting goods. Now, Equilibrium modified atmosphere packaging (EMAP) instead of MAP. When packaging vegetables and fruits, the gas atmosphere of the package is not air (O₂ 21%; CO₂ 0.038%; N₂ 78%) but consists of a lowered level of O₂ and a heightened level of CO₂. This kind of package slows down the normal respiration of the product to prolong its shelf-life. According to a Danish report, this process for temperature and packaging reduces aging of fruit and vegetables and can slow the degradation down and increase shelf life by more than 800%.

When meat is exposed to carbon monoxide, it reacts with the myoglobin in the blood giving the meat a bright red color. Fresh beef is naturally red, and as it ages, it becomes brown or grey. The carbon monoxide keeps it looking artificially fresh for up to a full year by restricting the growth of bacteria that proliferate from the increased heat of supermarket meat display cases, transportation, and temperature variation. How do you feel about that McDonald’s cheeseburger now?

In Russia and other European countries, some US meat products have been banned because we use this process, but also because what companies are actually pumping inside the meats. This report is from 2014 when Russia banned the meat because of a product inside it called Ractopamine, and approved use in pigs in 1999, cattle in 2003 and turkeys in 2009. This led in 1999 to some European countries banning the meat because it was labeled as being hormone free, but tests on the meat showed otherwise. Ractopamine is a growth-promoting drug which increases muscle mass by actively slowing protein degradation. According to the article linked in the previous sentence, other veterinary drugs which are withdrawn prior to slaughter, ractopamine is started and never withdrawn in the animal’s final days. It is given to beef cattle during their last 4-6 weeks, pigs in their last 4 weeks, and turkeys for their last 1-2 weeks. So yes, that chicken breast you're buying at the grocery store, it's not supposed to be that size naturally. Cut it into three pieces, then you have a normal breast size for a slaughtered chicken.

In 2004, a new three-gas mixture used for packaging of red meat cuts and ground beef products was approved by the Food and Drug Administration and is gaining in popularity. This mixture is 0.4 percent carbon monoxide, 30 percent carbon dioxide and 69.6 percent nitrogen. However, in 2006 the FDA was urged to Ban Carbon-Monoxide-Treated Meat as more and more people were made aware of the process of MAP and EMAP.

According to the FDA and the American Meat Institute: “Meat treated with CO is safe to eat. CO is only hazardous if you breathe it, but once it is chemically combined with the meat it can't hurt you, so after you open a package of ground beef there will be few if any, molecules of CO to breathe.” That may be the case as both Governments funded and private funded scientists continue to research the issue, but in the end, do you want to eat meat that may be months old? The Health Science Institute wrote in 2006 that, “Adding carbon monoxide to meat is a really bad idea for one reason: When meat stays red, consumers could be fooled into thinking that old meat is fresh.’

So, as a consumer, you should always check the expiration date and not the looks. If the consumer forgot to check the expiration date or if the store were to make a mistake or cheat, the meat would still be obviously spoiled once the package was opened. I spoke to a butcher and asked his opinion on the process, and said to put the carbon treated meat onto a kitchen counter-top to thaw, then leave the house for one week and come back. When you do, nothing will have changed. Even though the meat has sat out for one week, it will still be bright pink. Then he said to try that with non-chemically treated beef and leave the house for one week. He said as you open the door to the house you will vomit from the horrid smell of rotted meat, and bugs will have infested the house.

These meats are also at a cheaper price point, so who buys them? Lower income and middle-class people. What does this do over time? The answers are not clear, but in the ned do you want chemically treated meats or GMO products? Or do you want fresh, sustainable, all-natural meats? No brainer for me. I would gladly pay a little extra to get a good quality product, instead of paying more money later on to the doctors to fix me and keep me alive before cancer rips me apart.

Other methods used by large meat processing plants besides MAP are chlorine baths where bacteria is killed and it controls slime and algae, increasing the products shelf life, plus it eliminates costly hand-cleaning labor and materials. In addition to disinfecting, wash down, and chilling of water. "Pinners" in the slaughter facility who remove the birds' feathers by hand, then wash their hands with the chlorinated water to reduce odors and bacterial count after which the birds are sprayed to wash all foreign material from the carcass. also, in a 2014 directive, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) admits the many uses of chlorine in poultry and meat production, are not required to be on the label under the "accepted conditions of use agreements.”

The next method is ammonia also known as "Pink Slime" pushed from processing tubes and sent to grocery stores and US schools in the form of chicken nuggets. Other examples include "lean, finely textured beef" (LFTB) which is made from unwanted beef "trim" and treated with puffs of ammonia gas to retard the growth of E. coli.

To conclude and make you aware if you are not already, so please check what you're buying especially if it is something you're going to eat. Do your research and check and recheck to make sure. For years it has been said that GMO’s are fine and safe, but as you dive deeper you find some serious problems with it.

Food Code Violations at Mara-a-Lago

Palm Beach, Florida

April 15, 2017

By Sean Overpeck (CFE)

Picture courtesy of Fortune Magazine

The national landmark estate built in 1927 known as Mara-a-Lago just outside Palm Beach is a place of prestige, a private member club envisioned by its creator the heiress and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post. She saw the house as a future winter retreat for American Presidents and foreign dignitaries however, successive presidents declined to use the mansion after her death in 1973. That is until 2017 with the inauguration of the 45th President Donald Trump, who back in 1985 purchased the 126 room estate and golf club, that he now calls The Southern White House, versus going to Camp David for his retreats. The private house for the Trump family is separate from the club and guest rooms that is more like a private hotel than it is a club. With all that prestige the last thing you would think about is thirteen food code violations in the kitchen restaurant.

Follow Wine, Dine, and Play:

Being in the food service industry for the past twenty years, I have prided myself on cleanliness. After all you're handling food that other people are going to eat, and the last thing you want is to be fired, fined, or imprisoned because you poisoned someone with food, or worse like Mohammed Khalique Zaman owner of the Indian Garden restaurant in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom who killed a patron who had a nut allergy. So when I came across the article from the UK Telegraph, I was shocked, but not surprised. It seems daily now that another restaurant is in the news or a product is being recalled because of some sort of illness. You can almost call it a war.

Picture courtesy of AOL.com

My training in food service started at Fort Lee, Virginia at the Army Food Service Quartermaster Corps Joint Culinary Training Center. Before this I worked odd jobs while still in school at fast food places, but didn’t really know anything about food safety. Day one at the Army school before you picked up a recipe or began scrambling eggs, you washed your hands. Then you were introduced to the Tri-Services directorate Army Technical Bulletin Medical 530 (TB MED 530 for short). This is a very strict doctrine that goes into great details about food safety, what to do, and what not to do. It works hand in hand with the US food and Drug Administrations (FDA) Food Code, which makes updates every four years with the most recent edition published in 2013.

Through the Army school, my time in the military, and later on working as a contractor you were taught the importance of food safety and the dangers of spreading foodbourne illnesses. The main things to remember were to keep your area properly cleaned, keep hot food hot and cold food cold. Those three basics would keep you out of trouble most of the time. The TB MED like the US Food Code and other publications like ServSafe from the National Restaurant Association are designed as training and reference guides to keeping the food and your customers safe. Yet according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), every year in the United States alone there are 48 million cases of foodbourne illness every year resulting in 120,000+ hospitalizations, and over 3000 deaths. 48 million out of a population of 324 million. That number is extremely staggering.

Picture courtesy of NBC News

This number at the same time does not surprise me. When I worked at small restaurants in Georgia outside of Atlanta, and up in Canton, Ohio I saw the level of how filthily some of these restaurants were, and wondered ho they ever past a health inspection. One of the restaurants I worked at in Ohio that I thought was disgustingly sick is on the TripAdvisor top 10 best restaurants in the city list, that is scary.

At the same time, another reason why these numbers are no surprise is the industry itself. People think of a wonderful restaurant experience and expect miracles of creation like they see on the Food Network, yet never look behind the doors of reality. The industry is a very low wage one, where many people hired are immigrants, who lack the knowledge of personal hygiene, and barely understand a word of English, making training next to impossible. Can it be done, yes, but you need lots of help to do it, while trying to maintain your operation. When I contracted for several companies in Afghanistan from 2009-13 in food service, they hired third country nationals mainly from India, Nepal, and the Philippines. They were also required under contract to hire local nationals.

1987 at Mara-a-Lago - picture courtesy of Vanity Fair

Getting these people to wash there hands and take a shower was challenging enough. Then once you found a way to tach them, or use an interpreter to pass on the instruction, giving them on the job training, they just went back to the way they wanted to do things when you turned your back. Teach them to properly dice a vegetable, then on your day off, or when your in the dining room, they massacre and chop the crap out of it. Teach an Iraqi how to properly use a broom to sweep, then mop the floor with the proper ratio of soap and water, then you walk away and there mopping and sweeping at the same time with the mop, and little cleaner in the bucket. There are thousands of examples. Most them also knew that by contract we had to hire them, so they could get away with it, without hardly any repercussions. The Indian work force knew that it took months to bring in a replacement and get them medically and security vetted, so they had the same attitude.

Well, why not hire an American for the job? It is an american contract using american tax payers money right? In Antarctica the contract under the National Science Foundation required American workers only. So why not the Afghanistan or Iraq? The operation is bigger, feeding more people, but why? Simple - money. An American worker costs high five figures for salary in overseas contracting plus a large fee for medical and security screening. An Indian or other third country national gets paid under 20,000 a year. You can hire five of them for the cost of one American. The contracts don’t specify to hire only people from certain countries like the National Science Foundation contract stated. It just says in shorter words to get the job done. How many cases of illness are there from Afghanistan during the war years? Who knows, but over 100 got sick from turkey cooked incorrectly in Kandahar in 2012, and at the Bagram Air Base, the nickname “The Bagram Bug” went around when you were feeling ill, and most of the time it was food related. Not from bad quality food, just under-trained people who cut corners.

So, what were some of the health code violations found among the thirteen at Mar-a-Lago inspection on January 26, 2017? Meats not stored at the right temperature, raw fish that had not undergone proper parasite destruction, and two kitchen coolers that were "not maintained in good repair”. Meaning that they weren’t holding proper temperature levels to maintain cold food under 41°f. Violations also include fish intended to be served raw that had not had the right parasite destruction.

Picture courtesy of mypalmbeachcoast.com

Inspectors said the fish be fully cooked or discarded. Come on Chef, put more lemon juice on that damn thing. There was ham at 57°f, beef at 50°f, duck at 50°f, and chicken at 49°f. According to the report a Mar-a-Lago technician said the cooler was on defrost and he had "corrected the problem”. Other violations included an employee hand wash sink where water was not hot enough. The standard is a temperature of 110°f for hand washing. Three of the violations were classed as "high priority" meaning they "could contribute directly to a foodbourne illness”. According to the report,those found on the Jan 26 inspection were "corrected on site" at the time.

President Trump is according to the article a self-described germaphobe, and he was once quoted as saying: "One bad hamburger and you can destroy McDonald’s.” What about thirteen violations at the winter home where dignitaries such as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and Chinese President XI Jinping have visited? That would have been one hell of public relations disaster, trying to explain why we poisoned a foreign head of state because the cooks could not follow the simple and basic protocols of food safety. The moral of the story is that no matter what country you are from, your level of education, what you're being paid by the hour, when you have a job as important as a food handler, be safe. Learn the correct way and do the right thing. In any restaurant, cafe, or dining facility either in the private business world, hotel, or government contract, food safety in everyones responsibility. If you have to raise your prices or increase the fees of your contract to hire more people, or more qualified people, then in the beginning the client may shrug and look down on you, but in the end it will save you more than you can imagine.

President Donald Trump withPresident XI Jinping, picture
courtesy of The Hive

Take the time, do the right thing, train your people, and be safe. This was at the President of the United States winter home, so don’t think that it can’t happen where you are as well.

Keep up to date with food Safety News here. I uses this sight for many trainings, and to keep up with the latests bugs and violations.

****

The worlds best, based on my list of restaurants reviewed and rated at 4 or more stars. From the 300 published reviews as of March 2017, less than 15% hold that prestigious ranking of 4 or 5 stars, meaning that the visit was an outstanding or extraordinary experience. I have dined at restaurants on five continents from cafes, chains, and fine dining best of the world Michelin rated locations. Not all of the worlds best ratings are the same as mine.

Wine, Dine, and Play’s Favorites

Brick and Mortar Rustic New American Fare Saint Petersburg, Florida USA	Tetsuya’s Eclectic French-Asian Tasting Menu Sydney, Australia	The Test Kitchen Modern Eclectic African Cuisine Woodstock, South Africa
Aubergine Innovative East Meets West Menu Cape Town, South Africa	Qui Restaurant Modern Upscale Global Plates (Now Called Kuneho by Paul Qui) Austin, Texas, USA	Restaurant Le Gabriel Classic French Gastronomique Bordeaux, France
Vue de Monde Elegant Fine Australian Dining Melbourne, Australia	Constantia Uitsig La Colombe Chic Country-Style Vineyard Restaurant Constantia, Cape Town, South Africa	Zuma Hip Asian-Fusion Dubai, UAE
Grill 225 Ornate Top 10 American Chophouse Charleston, South Carolina, USA	La TABLE de Joël Robuchon Haute French Cuisine Paris, France	Alinea American-Global Molecular Menu Chicago, Illinois, USA
Quay Quintessential Modern Australian Cuisine Sydney, Australia	Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud Impeccably Acclaimed French Cuisine Dublin, Ireland	The French Laundry French-American Fine Dining Yountville, Napa, California, USA
At.mosphere High Rise Fine Global Dining, Highest Restaurant In The World Dubai, UAE	The Tasting Room at Le Quartier Français Contemporary, African-Inspired Tasting Journey Franschhoek, South Africa	Commanders Palace Upscale Creole Fare New Orlean’s, Louisiana, USA
Attica Inventive Eclectic Tasting Menus Ripponlea, Melbourne, Australia	Leopard Hills Lodge Safari + Upscale African Cuisine Sabi Sand Game Reserve, South Africa	Rioja Creative Mediterranean Cuisine Denver, Colorado, USA
Mr. Todiwala’s Kitchen Vibrant Pan-Indian Cuisine Slough, United Kingdom	Cook'n' With Gas Bistro High-End New Zealand Fare & Bistro Christchurch, New Zealand	Reflets par Pierre Gagnaire Posh French + A Culinary Experimentalism Festival City, Dubai, UAE
McCrady’s Tavern Inspired Farm-to-Table Dining Charleston, South Carolina, USA

So many great wines in this world, here are a few boutiques, cult wines, and favorites:

Meerlust Wine Estate Rubicon A 1756 Estate Famed Rubicon Blend Stellenbosch, South Africa	Hoopes Vineyard Big, Bold, Cult Cabernets Oakville, California, USA
Jonata Winery Screaming Eagles Sister Santa Barbara, California, USA	Yarra Yering Agincourt, Waterloo, Salamanca Yarra Valley, Australia
Penner Ash Wine Cellars Boutique Producers of Pinot Noir Willamette, Oregon	La Motte Old Huguenot Style Shiraz & Cabernets Franschhoek, South Africa
Château Lanessan A Cru Bourgeois Supérieur Cussac-Fort-Médoc, Bordeaux, France	Bergström Wines World Class Oregon Pinot Noir Willamette, Oregon
Biltmore Estate Winery 20+ Blue Ridge Handcrafted Wines Asheville, North Carolina, USA	Domaine Bertagna 13th Century Cistercian -1er Cru Les Cras Vougeot, Burgundy, France
Ghost Block Vineyards Exceptional Cult Sauvignon Blanc & Cabernets Yountville, California	Eagles Nest Winery Not Kehlsteinhaus, Exceptional Shiraz Constantia, South Africa

Reviewed by:

Sean Overpeck (CFE)

Executive Chef

Father, Husband, Wine Drinker

Restaurant nut, History and

Star Trek lover

winedineandplayblog@gmail.com

Picture below was taken in 2010

At Bagram Air Base with actor

James Gandolfini 1961-2013

About Sean:

I am based out of St. Petersburg, Florida working in the food service industry for over twenty years, and am currently with the American Embassy as the Executive Chef. Formally I have worked with groups contracting in Afghanistan, and Antarctica, also working in restaurants in and around Atlanta, Georgia prior to the wars. I have also owned a catering company and served proudly in the United States Army Food Service Program. The idea for Wine, Dine, and Play started in late 2012 after a trip to Jordan, when I was asked by friends to write down the experiences from a few restaurants, wine from the region that I tasted, and locations of interest such as Petra. Since that time, over 300 articles have been written, including fifteen restaurants from the worlds top 100 lists of San Pellegrino and the Elite Travelers Guide. There are articles on exotic world locations such as Victoria Falls, and South African Safari’s; food recipes & Grand Food Dictionaries; ethnic country cuisines such as Afghan, and Peruvian; tasting tours of world cities like Charleston, Cape Town, and Dubai; and of course wine from vineyards in California, Oregon, the Carolina’s, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia, with much more to see and write about.

Who is John Galt?

“Culinary perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things,

But in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.”

-Angelique Arnauld (1591-1661)

Other articles of interest on Wine, Dine, and Play:

The Complete A to Z Food and Beverage Grand Dictionary

Shark Cage Diving in Gansbaai, South Africa

Afghan Cuisine and its History A tasting from Herat to Kabul

The Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai, UAE

Converting a recipe card from Imperial to Metric

Peruvian Cuisine Andes, Amazon, and Lima

Fugitives Drift Lodge and the Zulu Battlefields in Kwa-Zulu-Natal, South Africa

Red Hills Market in Willamette, Oregon

A Taste of McMurdo - 8 Months on the Ice Ross Island, Antarctica

Netflix Movie Codes search for your favorites

(Articles coming soon)

Petra, Jordan

A Taste of Dubai

A Taste of South Africa vol 1 & 2

Wine, Dine, And Play’s “best of” List

FOB Shank - Cooking with Incoming

My Favorite Restaurants and Wine

TTFN

Pages

Norovirus at the Olympics

Pretty In Pink - Carbon Monoxide In Meat

Food Code Violations at Mara-a-Lago

You may also like:

Popular Posts: