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W. Blake Gray, Online Wine Columnist of the Year, and More

David Honig
Features
1 min read
Congratulations to Palate Press' own W. Blake Gray, winner of the prestigious Ramos Pinto Online Wine Columnist of the Year, in the 2013 Louis Roederer Wine Writers' Awards. Blake, a Columnist for Palate Press since 2010, was nominated for stories like Darth Vader is My Lover: Revalations about Brettanomyces in

Wine Safety: Should you be Concerned?

Erika Szymanski
Features
7 min read
The last time wine safety really made the news was when, in 1985, some Austrian winemakers were found bulking up their wine with diethylene glycol. Used as an ingredient in some kinds of antifreeze, it added sweetness and body to wine, along with the potential for liver, kidney, and brain

Virginia’s Millionaire Winegrowers

Roger Morris
Features
4 min read
For those of us who were writing about wine at the time, it was a surprising, even humorous-sounding, development.  The Italians were coming to Virginia to make wine. The year was 1976, and we had already been shocked once that season.  Napa Valley (with some help from Sonoma grapes) had

With Wine, Emotion Matters

David White
Features
2 min read
Wine enthusiasts are always looking for an experience that’s completely arresting -- a wine that stops you in your tracks, makes the room go silent, and just pulls you into the glass. Sometimes, those wines are expensive -- perhaps opened at an extravagant wine dinner where everyone brings a bottle

Going Wild in Alsace – Yeasts, Elegance and Spontaneity

Simon J Woolf
Features
8 min read
There's been a bit of a furore about wild yeast fermentation over the past month. The fires were stoked by new research published by scientists at the University of British Columbia and authored by graduate student Jessica M. Lange, summarized in Wine Business Monthly: “Regardless of which yeast started the

Terroir in Champagne: Will Terroirists Kill the Blends?

Caroline Henry
Features
5 min read
The Champenois have long struggled with the notion of terroir. Unlike nearby Burgundy where just about every vineyard has had its terroir defined, in Champagne one will often speak about the generic Champagne terroir: that which makes Champagne’s wines unique. Common elements of this generic terroir are the region’s poor,