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Discoveries: Giant Cabs Back in Balance

Becky Sue Epstein
Feature Stories
3 min read
Whether you tend to open a luxury wine for weekday meal or for a once-a-year celebration, I think you’ll be much happier now with the recent vintages of high-end cabernet sauvignon-based wines and Bordeaux-style blends from Napa – and from some exalted wineries in Italy, too, for that matter. It

Roero Arneis is Italy’s overlooked great white wine

W. Blake Gray
Features
5 min read
Seashells are the key to Roero Arneis. Seashells and sand. To understand this underappreciated Italian white wine, you have to think about sitting on a beach – 100 kilometers from the sea. Roero is just across the Tanaro River from Barolo, but by such small geographic differences fortunes are made,

The vexed question of winery tasting fees

Simon J Woolf
Feature Stories
3 min read
Perhaps it should be listed under "First world problems", but the issue of how much wineries charge for a tasting is alive and well, as I learned firsthand last weekend. It is, of course, partly cultural. Wineries in most European countries, unlike their American counterparts, have tended historically not to

Cariñena Campaign

Michelle Locke
Features
5 min read
Unusual winter rains turned the Cariñena vineyards in northeastern Spain into a technicolor swirl this spring, the variegated soils glowing red, yellow, orange under windswept skies. It was a moment of glory for a region which can get overlooked in the busy category of Spanish wine. After all, many consumers
ginandtonic

Gin & Me

Gary Thomas
Features
7 min read
“Red meat and gin.” – Julia Child, when asked about her longevity. “The gin and tonic has saved more lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the empire.” – Winston Churchill “I’ll stick with gin. Champagne is just ginger ale that knows somebody,” – Hawkeye Pierce Gin – which

Malibu Coast: The Reluctant AVA

Roger Morris
Feature Stories
6 min read
It is a warm afternoon in early May, and the skinny shoulders of the Pacific Coast Highway – “PCH” to locals – are lined for miles with single files of parked cars as Angelenos enjoy a few hours of Sunday sun-soaking on the beaches along the Malibu Coast.  Traffic moves

Five Things You Need to Know about Swiss Wine

Becky Sue Epstein
Features
5 min read
Rare wines from revitalized, historic grapes are putting Switzerland on the wine lover’s map Swiss wines are nearly impossible to find outside of the country, as they make up less than 1% of global production. Only 1.5% is exported, because the natives -- who rank in the top ten in