For a few days this October I was invited to visit Sardinia, the second largest island in the Mediterranean, a couple hundred miles southwest of the Roman coast. In Sardinia, scientists are now studying Cannonau, a native red wine, believing it could be a major reason why this part of
Let’s play a game: let’s imagine the steep, dramatic Douro vineyards of Portugal are completely smooth. Imagine the hostile, rocky landscape of the island of Pantelleria: totally flat. Or the undulating countryside of Cinque Terre (Italy) or the mountainous Lavaux (Switzerland). Do you see what I mean? In this imaginary
It’s lunchtime at the San Simone winery – a homey spread of cheesy mushroom and spinach pastas – and the Brisotto sisters, fourth-generation vintners, are explaining the everyday appeal of Prosecco. A good bottle, they say, is like a good pair of jeans, fuss-free style that goes with everything. True enough,
Last week I spoke at the University of Tampa about wine blogging and wine itself. The audience was entirely undergraduates. Fortunately for all concerned, rather than me just yakking for 90 minutes, I took plenty of questions. I had been looking forward to this for weeks. What would a group
First came the craft beer revolution – taking the USA from a mere 92 breweries in 1980, to the current total of almost 2,400. Then came organic, biodynamic and natural wine, niche movements that are nonetheless now shifting millions of dollars worth of wine around the globe. But natural wine has long since been
“It’s… outsized. We get big tannins, big fruit, big acid, and big extraction.” That’s how Calcareous Vineyards winemaker Jason Joyce describes the types of wines that the Paso Robles region is naturally calibrated to produce. Even by New World wine standards, Paso Robles has climate conditions that some might consider
If you Google "Nobel Prize wine," you'll learn that Brian Schmidt is the only Nobel-winning winemaker. Schmidt and his wife own and operate Maipenrai in Canberra, Australia, and he shared the Nobel in Physics in 2011 for contributing to the case that the universe is expanding – work which, it's
It is a Saturday evening in late summer in Montepulciano, the Tuscan hill town that is the namesake of Vino Nobile, which, alongside Chianti and Brunello, makes up the holy trinity of Tuscan Sangiovese wines. I arrived here yesterday with a couple of other American food and wine writers. Along