As a food critic, she demystified the Twin Cities restaurant scene with a friendly, humorous and knowledgeable voice. Now, four Beard Awards later, Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl guides the masses through the (often daunting) world of wine. Take it from us: if you need a little hand-holding when it comes to vino, you'll want it to be hers.

AndrewZimmern.com: Working as a dining critic is a pretty special gig. How did you get started in the business?

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl: I got my first job in restaurants when I was 13, working as a dishwasher in a restaurant in Cape Cod. I loved it to death, being part of the team, watching the busboys, getting special meals from the chef – one of the most memorable meals in my life was eating a chicken dish seated on a 5-gallon bucket out in back of the restaurant, using a tree-stump as a table. I think it was a reward for cleaning out the walk-in, which was…well, I won’t get into it in case there’s anyone reading this and eating. There were problems.  But my chef hired me every summer thereafter, the next year I cut broccoli by the case, learned how to start the marinara sauce, and was a general prep cook. The next year I bearded mussels. By the time I was 17 I was a line cook and I wanted to go to cooking school, but my chef told me she’d gut me like a swordfish if I did. (We dealt with a lot of whole swordfish.) The logic being that I could go to cooking school any time, but could only have the experience of being 18 with my peers once. So I came out to Minnesota to go to college, and I liked it so much I stayed.

Meanwhile, I was a lifetime literature nerd – editor of my kindergarten haiku anthology, always wanted to write, that was my first dream which I thought cooking would support – which I guess in the end it did! Right out of college I got in on the ground floor of the first, pre-1997 internet boom that no one remembers, writing for all the Conde Nast internet start-ups, epicurious.com, phys.com, and swoon.com, (they were all very different, all original content) and also something called Microsoft Sidewalk.com, which was Microsoft’s bid to become the new Yellow Pages; they had this idea that they would do new restaurant reviews for every restaurant in town. This was something like 500 restaurants, and because I was doing all this other internet writing, I was invited to do some restaurant reviews for them – but I really needed the money, all the good restaurants had been assigned to more important writers than me, and all that was left was this slush pile of the 100 worst, or unknown, or most inconveniently located restaurants. But I was desperate for the money, and, literally, the protein – I was following my dream of being a writer, and earning $7,000 a year working 3 jobs!

One of those jobs was being a sort of close-in contributing writer at City Pages, mostly doing reported essays.  Well, City Pages restaurant critic at the time announced she was going to move to California, so they gave the job to me.  It was actually a pretty low-status job at the time, at City Pages we spoke truth to power – we didn’t speak truth to lasagna.  But I loved having the regular column, I loved advocating for good chefs and slamming the bad ones, or pointing out when and how the service was undermining the cooking. And here we are!

AZ.com:  You began your career as the dining critic for the Minneapolis weekly, City Pages, in 1997. What are the three most notable changes in the world of food journalism since then?

DMG: First, the decline of the big media: The biggest newspapers devote far fewer resources to everything than they used to, which has made room for more voices.  Second, those voices! The food bloggers, chef-bloggers, Facebook posters, Twitterers, and so on have added both a lot of interesting voices, and a lot more pressure to get a review out fast.  Third, I guess the death of Gourmet, which I still haven’t recovered from.

AZ.com: What's a better rush? Your first Beard Award or the last one.

DMG: The first. I felt like Cinderella at the ball. I couldn’t believe all the glamorous people, the wonderful food, that I was one of them.  I’ll never forget it, it was one of the nicest nights of my life.

AZ.com: Your new book, Drink This: Wine Made Simple, sets out to demystify the often intimidating world of wine. What inspired you to write the book?

DMG: I feel like wine today is about where food was in 1997 when I started-- people love it, feel impassioned, but don’t have a vocabulary or it or a lot of confidence. I have a profound belief in the importance of people’s time off, their birthdays and Friday nights and Christmas Eve’s and if I can help make those times better it would be a great thing. I think I have a gift for making complicated subjects accessible, and thought if I could help people drink better that would be time well spent.

AZ.com: What take-home points would you like readers to gain from Drink This?

DMG: The whole book is basically about two things. One, demystifying wine, and two, demystifying the wine shop and telling you the specific bottles of wine you need to sample to discover your own personal taste. I’ve heard from a lot of readers who are doing the tastings in the book and finding out what they like, and finding within those parameters what they like that fits their budget, and it makes me really happy.  If people learn their taste well enough to be able to go into wine shops and order of wine lists without any stress at all I’ll be happier than a cat at a sushi bar.

AZ.com: Americans go bonkers over “Two Buck Chuck” and other inexpensive, readily available bottles from big box stores. Should we be buying these wine? What’s so great about them? What do they lack compared to an inexpensive bottle at a specialty wine shop?

DMG: If that’s what you like, by all means buy them and enjoy them.  As a restaurant critic I’m firmly of the opinion that chili cheese fries and foie gras are both great things. That said, a lot of wines like Yellow Tail are really pretty generic, sort of the McDonald’s Big Mac of wines, a little sweeter and softer than most foods.  (They’re fixed at the winery to take off any distinct edges by techniques like micro-oxygenation, bubbling oxygen through a wine to mimic the softening of aging.) You can find lots of interesting wines in a specialty shop that are under $10 and offer a much more interesting, unique, or textured experience, but no one should feel bad about what they like or what they can afford. Wine is here to make our lives better (like cheese, chips, and plates!) – not to make us feel bad.

AZ.com: Few things are more intimidating than picking a wine off a big list in a restaurant, and often, a sommelier can intensify the stress. What’s the best way to navigate these waters?

DMG: The best way is to know your own taste – if you know you love Sauvignon Blanc or are mad for Zinfandel the wine list will suddenly go from a random list of intimidating nonsense words to something very much like an ice-cream case. I love butter-brickle, there’s the butter-brickle, score!

AZ.com: What are 3 things restaurants should do to make wine more accessible to diners?

DMG: They should offer tastes of everything they offer by the glass. If you’re sitting there waffling between two wines the server should say: “Would you like a taste of both?” Then run and get it and present it to you so you can decide. You’ll come out of that interaction feeling confident that you got the best wine for you, pleased with the restaurant, and knowing a little more about your own taste in wine. The restaurant will have turned an uncomfortable customer into a happy one, and likely a repeat visitor.

Edit their wine lists!  There’s no good reason to have a 2,000 bottle list. Do you really expect your guests to sit down, get out their reading glasses, and spend 20 minutes ignoring their date? And it doesn’t say anything about the restaurant. You pay the restaurant to choose dishes for you, I think you’re also paying them to narrow down your wine choices for you. A two or three-hundred bottle list is more than enough options. Stand for something, not for everything!

Serve wine at the right temperature! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had wines served steaming hot – yuck!  Diners can get in on the act here too, just as you have expectations for the temperature of food (lasagna, steak, salad – they all have their appropriate temperatures) expect your wine to be at cellar temperature, that is, warmer than fridge temperature, but colder than room temperature.

AZ.com: Is there any shame in picking the cheapest bottle on a wine list?

DMG: Not at all. Every restaurant should stand behind every wine on their list, and a lot of sommeliers take the cheapest winest to be an especial challenge. For my money, the cheapest wine on a nice restaurant’s list is often better than the second-cheapest, because it attracts a lot of attention.

AZ.com: Name 3 wines that we probably aren't drinking that we should be.

DMG: Moscato d’Asti. This sweet sparkler from Italy’s most prestigious wine region, Piedmont, is lyrical and lively and fun, like a perfect pop song or a Fragonard painting. But to most Americans the name of the wine sounds an awful lot like ‘Asti Spumante’, a pretty innocuous sweet awful wine. This keeps Moscato d’Asti underpriced – most bottles are well under $30, often under $20. Sure it’s sweet, but it’s also delicious, and low alcohol – you can put away half a bottle while you’re watching Bizarre Foods and only injest as much alcohol as a single glass of most other wines. 

Washington State Merlot. Merlot is super unpopular now, largely because it was trashed as uncool in the movie Sideways, so most Merlots are currently underpriced. But Washington State is planted with tons of it because when Merlot was popular, in the 1990’s, Washington was just getting going as a wine region.  The northern summers there have long days (think of Alaska with its midnight sun, the farther north you go the longer the summer days, so Washington has longer summer days than California) and those long days encourage the Merlot to develop lots of aromatic elements, while the cool weather keeps the grapes from getting too sweet. Altogether, big brands like Hogue, Columbia Crest, or Snoqualmie Merlot are some of the biggest bargains in the wine store.

American Sangiovese. Cal-Ital wines are largely despised by Italian wine connoisseurs – a wealthy, elite, and of course Italy-centric group. Because Italian wine collectors hand out Italian wine scores most people think American Sangioveses stink. They don’t! They’re often juicy, lively, incredibly food-friendly wines, the perfect wine to pair with your weeknight pizza on the couch.

AZ.com: If we gave you $500 and told you to go buy yourself some wine at a local wine store what would you come home with, 3 cases or one bottle? What would you choose and why?

DMG: Three cases.  I have my eye on a couple of cheap, ageable wines, notably Louis Martini’s Sonoma Cabernet Sauvignon, it’s on sale for about $10 a bottle at one store I frequent, it’s fun to throw some wine in the basement and watch it evolve over the years. If I was rich I’d probably feel the same way about buying cases of $30 wines, but I’m not.  The bargain hunting, beating the system aspect of wine can be fun, it’s one of the bonuses that comes from knowing your taste.

AZ.com: Name 5 restaurants in the Twin Cities that really understand wine.

DMG: Café Barbette, La Belle Vie, Lucia’s, Manny’s, and Osteria I Nonni

AZ.com: What are 3 things about being Dara that people would be shocked at hearing?

DMG: I like Cheerios. One of the best vacations of my life was a couple days in the Wisconsin Dells with the kids at a waterpark. Food is not always my highest priority.

AZ.com: How do you edit, write, blog, tweet, dine and drink and still be Super-Mom?

DMG: I don’t know. I’m typing the answers to this after midnight and there’s enough laundry in the basement that I think I could dive in from the stairs and do the backstroke.  I have a great husband who’s a Super-Dad, and God has seen fit to provide me with very large whole milk lattés on a regular basis. It’s a good life.

AZ.com: What’s in your fridge at home?

DMG: String cheese from Eichten’s, always. Organic strawberries. I know I should be an in-season locovore, but the baby loves them, and so she eats a few every day. They’re important for vitamins and antioxidants, I think.  Cedar Summit milk and cream, my little boy drinks about a pint of a mix of the two every day. Harmony organics eggs or Larry Schultz’ organic eggs –  the kids are mad about hard-boiled eggs, some days they’ll eat half a dozen between them. No kidding. The rest is condiments and restaurant left-overs, I’m in the middle of researching a big cheap-eats package for Minnesota Monthly so I’ve been hitting four or five restaurants a day. Right now I think we’ve got some Emily’s Lebanese deli spinach pies and homemade yogurt, Hoban Korean leftover pork bul go gi, and Evergreen Chinese fried rice and three-cup tofu. I need drunken roommates!  By the time the magazine hits the stands it’s time to throw out the leftovers. Then I’m on to the next restaurants. Oh, and a bottle of bubbly!  I’m a firm believer in celebrating life as it happens, and my husband and I end up splitting a bottle at least once a month. Right now we’ve got some American Schramsberg in there waiting for the next triumph. I consider keeping the family happy and getting to the end of this interview a triumph. You should too! Cheers!

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl has been reviewing restaurants and covering food and wine in the Twin Cities since 1995, most notably as City Pages’ restaurant critic, but also for Gourmet, USA Today, Wine & Spirits, Bon Appetit, and Saveur. She’s been included in five editions of the Best Food Writing anthologies, and been nominated for seven James Beard Awards – though, to tell you the truth, most of the time the medals from her four wins are buried under a pile of chocolate wrappers at the back of her desk. Check out her latest thoughts on food and wine in her blog, Dear Dara, and in Minnesota Monthly.