Alex Burch, wine director of Bastion in Nashville, cautioned, “Picking a wine by its label is slightly better than judging a book by its cover.” Still, there are a lot of things going on in one of those labels, more than I even realized, with words like “producer” and...
Fendant, perhaps with a bubbly cheese fondue, as clear and mineral as Alpine air, or Gamaret with its peppery cassis notes? If you haven’t, it might just be because the Swiss drink almost all of it themselves! In fact, only 1% of the total output is exported—a good...
Botrytis cinerea is a fungus—also known as grey rot—which has spores that pierce and infect wine grapes, causing them to shrivel and sweeten. It can add complexity and longevity to sweet wines, like Sauternes; in these cases it is known as “Noble Rot.
“When offered the right support, northern soil can produce an unexpected range. According to the Vermont Grape and Wine Council, the cold-hardy vineyard will survive to “minus 25, minus 35, some even to minus 40 degrees F,” thanks to the hybrid varieties that thrive...
"After three trips with 13 weeks of exploring Argentina’s wine regions, I came home with an abundance of knowledge, interesting stories and spectacular photography... and some very special friends I made along the way. By now you must be wondering, as the opening...
“Our tastes in wine have changed over the past decade. That should be no surprise, as wine surpassed beer as our favorite tipple, rosé became a cliche (brosé, frozé, “rosé all day”), and the choices available to us have expanded, including wines from the Balkans,...
“Rosé is a wine like any other. Some are good, even excellent. Some are mediocre, and some are sweet pink confections like the white zinfandels of the 1970s and ’80s. If you do care about the wine you drink, why settle for the bad stuff? Rosé can be wonderful. It can...
Last weekend the temperature on my back deck was 95 degrees, steaks were on the grill, and I craved a thirst-quenching drink that wasn’t that summer cliché, rosé. With charred meat, beer is not the answer, nor is a frozen margarita or tart white. Sticky summer weather...
“It used to be that only a handful of wineries made sparkling wine in the U.S.—namely a handful in California owned by Champagne houses such as Chandon and Roederer. The traditional Champagne process takes a lot of time, equipment, and manpower, meaning the bar to...