Author W. Blake Gray

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W. Blake Gray
Staff Writer
Wine writer W. Blake Gray is Chairman of the Electoral College of the Vintners Hall of Fame. Previously wine writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, he has contributed articles on wine and sake to The Los Angeles Times, Food & Wine, Wine & Spirits, Wine Review Online, and a variety of other publications. He travels frequently to wine regions and enjoys coming home to San Francisco.

Tejo focuses with shorter name, smaller production

W. Blake Gray
Features
6 min read
Names are important. Let's consider two wine regions in Portugal: Ribatejo and Tejo. Ribatejo has a history of more than 250 years of producing boatloads – literally – of cheap wine, much of it sent in enormous containers to Portuguese colonies like Angola. Tejo (pronounced Tay-zhew), on the other hand, is

Mallorca: the Galápagos of grapes

W. Blake Gray
Features
7 min read
This might be the first serious wine article about Mallorcan wine in English since the advent of the Internet. In the pre-html era, Pliny the Elder praised it. Food & Wine's Ray Isle visited Mallorca in 2005, but his article was – duh! – about food AND wine. So I'm the guy to

El Dorado is worth searching for

W. Blake Gray
Features
5 min read
The divide in California wine seems simple: the coasts are cool, the interior is not. But then there's El Dorado. El Dorado doesn't neatly fit into any category. It's much cooler than most of California's interior because it's so far above sea level. In fact, the Fair Play subappellation, which

Time for a truce on alcohol levels

W. Blake Gray
Features
4 min read
Is the battle over wine alcohol level over? Is it time to climb out of our World War I-type trenches? Last month, Constellation Brands unveiled a huge 8-country survey that asked regular wine drinkers whether they have bought, or would buy, lower-alcohol wine. Of respondents, 38% said they have and