Artisan food and wine has variable human touch

By Jon Hurdle

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters Life!) - When it comes to ordering the world's best beer, wine and cheese, Jon Myerow doesn't mind if the taste isn't always the same or if the products arrive late - in fact he's more comfortable that way.

The founder and co-owner of two Philadelphia restaurants called Tria - specializing in the trio of fine foods - is a champion of "artisan" food and wine, which is typically made in small quantities by people who are passionate about what they do and occasionally overlook mundane considerations like delivery deadlines.

Myerow serves American and imported wines, beers and cheeses from producers that he and his staff know personally, or who are known to importers who are just as committed to what they do as are the makers themselves.

It's not that Myerow automatically rejects food and wine from major producers, they are just less likely to have the character of products made by people rather than corporations, he said.

He cited a man in Ocean Township, N.J. who quit his job to become a brewer in a one-room store because he loved making beer.

"This is handmade from the best ingredients by a guy who loves what he does," Myerow explained.

Another of his suppliers, a California brewer, couldn't supply a shipment on time because he had forgotten to order the bottles.

"Often, it doesn't show up," he said. "We expect stuff not to happen."

Big producers, by contrast, are more likely to have reliable deliveries of bland products.

"Most of these large producers make quality products," Myerow said. "They just are not very interesting."

In the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, Standing Stone Vineyards, one of Tria's suppliers, makes about 7,500 cases a year, mostly of Riesling. It's a tiny output compared with California's Napa Valley where even the smaller wineries typically produce 100,000 cases a year, said co-owner Martha Macinski.

There has been a dramatic increase in demand for the Riesling in recent years despite marked variations in the wine because of fluctuations in the local climate, Macinski said. Cool, wet weather, will trigger a high acid content, while a hot, dry growing season, as in 2007, will produce wine with some tropical flavors, she said.

Demand for artisan food and wine is growing strongly, according to Matthias Neidhart, owner of B. United International, a beer importer in Redding, Connecticut, whose business has been growing by 30-40 percent a year since it started in 1995.

Neidhart cited an Italian beer named Le Baladin which takes about three years to mature into a "nutty, chocolaty, sherry-like" brew with a hefty 15 percent alcohol content.

The brewer, in the Piedmont region, makes only 200 cases a year, of which Neidhart takes half, selling out within eight weeks of delivery despite each half-liter bottle costing