"Is a bottle of wine ever really worth $100?" This is a question I'm regularly asked by friends who aren't obsessed with wine. My answer is always the same. "Of course," I begin. "For starters, there's supply and demand -- bottles sell for what the market says they're worth." "But
When John and I left The Wall Street Journal in 2009 after almost 12 years of writing our wine column, Tastings, we ended a marvelous run of working together: 32 years under the same roofs. During that time, we’d had a lot of lunches together in newspaper cafeterias or nearby,
In Italy, where champagne imports reach more than seven million bottles annually, many wine producers who are in love with this product have tried over the years to create something similar. But France is France, and Italy is Italy: it’s impossible to produce the same wine from a different terroir,
One of the great pleasures of wine exploration is not just in encountering something new, but something special. Italy is full of something new. An inquisitive consumer can find dozens of new grape varieties to explore, red and white, fat and thin, rich and ripping. That's not a promise that
The average lifespan of a wine grape vine is one score years and five. Then it’s unceremoniously ripped out and sent on to a second life as compost, BBQ fuel, or crafting material. But at Cakebread Cellars in the Napa Valley, viticulturist Toby Halkovich and his crew have broken with
"Wine is just too fancy for Maryland," explained Rob Deford, the owner of Boordy Vineyards in Baltimore County, as he discussed the local wine industry's challenges. "We eat crabs here; we drink beer." The audience at this year's Drink Local Wine conference chuckled in agreement. Blue crabs and Natty Boh
The AVA name "Red Mountain" sells a lot of wine in steakhouses. I learned this from master sommelier Thomas Price of Seattle's Metropolitan Grill, who says people just like the sound and will order wine from there without knowing a thing about it. "Red Mountain is probably the best AVA
A long time ago, in ancient Italy, two neighboring republics were established - the Republic of Siena and the Republic of Florence. And between these two regions was a place called Chianti Classico. It is unclear where the name “Chianti” comes from, but it’s almost certainly Etruscan - the people