It was a summer scene like any other – the sky had clouded over, the air had turned cool and towel-wrapped children waited with their parents for the ferry back to the mainland. Only this wasn’t Sag Harbor or Block Island; instead, we were on Favignana in the Egadi Islands,
Amid the swirl of light, noise and color of Feria de Caballo, the over-the-top festival held each year in Jerez de la Frontera that is part state fair, part horse show, part Easter Parade (think fabulous flamenco dresses in place of bonnets), Peter Allison is making me a gin martini.
This is a common sentence in wine reviews: "Should continue to develop for 10-12 years." You see it all over the Wine Spectator. In the Wine Advocate, it's characteristically more enthusiastic: "Explosive flavors of dark chocolate, hazelnut parfait drizzled with fresh Tahitian vanilla sauce and crushed, fire-roasted Bing cherries. Will
Now that Independence Day is behind us, the summer is in full swing. Barbecues, hikes, and lazy days at the pool abound. And most of us are itching to leave town -- eager to spend some time away from work, escaping from it all. Wine enthusiasts are fortunate in that
Today, most wine is fermented in stainless-steel tanks. Very clean, very modern, very industrial. Very congruent with the food processing industry and it’s (sometimes reassuring, sometimes disturbing) obsession with sleek, sanitizable surfaces. Stainless steel only debuted in winemaking circa the 1950’s, but it’s now ubiquitous. So, of course, there are
Jean-Marie Guffens Went From Media Darling to Police Handcuffs (read part 1), and He’s Never Been Happier. Here’s Why Part II: The Big Knife If Jean-Marie Guffens's wines are even better today than they were in the 1990s, why is he struggling? Guffens doesn’t have a simple answer, but he wants
Jean-Marie Guffens Went From Media Darling to Police Handcuffs, and He’s Never Been Happier. Here’s Why Part I: France vs. Guffens On a brisk, sun-splashed day in Provence, the man who was once the white-hottest winemaker in the world sits at a long table studded with nearly 40 open bottles.
It's a warm August day in the hills of Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, a stretch of land that forms one of the most productive non-irrigated farming areas in all of the United States. In the tank room of Jan Waltz's winery, the better part of a dozen winemakers from across the