"Is a bottle of wine ever really worth $100?" This is a question I'm regularly asked by friends who aren't obsessed with wine. My answer is always the same. "Of course," I begin. "For starters, there's supply and demand -- bottles sell for what the market says they're worth." "But
When John and I left The Wall Street Journal in 2009 after almost 12 years of writing our wine column, Tastings, we ended a marvelous run of working together: 32 years under the same roofs. During that time, we’d had a lot of lunches together in newspaper cafeterias or nearby,
The emergence of syrah in Canada, and in particular in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, has been one of the most pleasant developments of the last few years, in Canada, and this wine is one of the finest examples of what that grape can do in that particular region. Born of
In Italy, where champagne imports reach more than seven million bottles annually, many wine producers who are in love with this product have tried over the years to create something similar. But France is France, and Italy is Italy: it’s impossible to produce the same wine from a different terroir,
In 2010, the Chinese takeover of the fine wine investment market was big news. Premium Bordeaux futures were selling like hot cakes, particularly off the back of the 2008 vintage (the Chinese symbol for the number 8 is considered to be very auspicious), and any fine wine merchant worth his
One of the great pleasures of wine exploration is not just in encountering something new, but something special. Italy is full of something new. An inquisitive consumer can find dozens of new grape varieties to explore, red and white, fat and thin, rich and ripping. That's not a promise that
April is the time of year when wine people start pricking up their ears, scanning for news from Bordeaux. A few actually go there for the en primeur tastings of the latest vintage in early April, while the rest wait around until their tasting notes are made public. Occasionally, we
The average lifespan of a wine grape vine is one score years and five. Then it’s unceremoniously ripped out and sent on to a second life as compost, BBQ fuel, or crafting material. But at Cakebread Cellars in the Napa Valley, viticulturist Toby Halkovich and his crew have broken with