Wine competitions: many wineries continue trust them implicitly, especially the international competitions where thousands of wines from around the world are entered. The judges who taste them also come from many different countries. All of the judges are professionals: winemakers, sommeliers, buyers or wine journalists. However, their personal and cultural
Wine writers love to talk about wine writing. They love to talk about why they do it, who’s doing it, who’s doing it well, who’s doing it badly, the right way to do it, the wrong way to do it, whether it matters, whether casual writers (“bloggers”) are as influential
This week, more than 100 wine producers are gathering in San Francisco to celebrate America's take on the 22 grape varieties originally made famous in France's Rhone Valley. The producers -- known collectively as the "Rhone Rangers" -- trace their roots to the 1980s, when a small group of California
A food writer friend of mine got a visit from the grammar police recently, who gave him a snoutful of snootiness over his use of "varietal" to describe wine grapes. His correspondent wrote the following: "One of my biggest peeves is the improper use of the term varietal in wine
The following is from Chateau Montelena. We at Palate Press raise our glass in celebration of the life of a name that will be forever remembered in the wine world. CALISTOGA, Calif., March 15, 2013 – James L. Barrett (Jim Barrett), Napa Valley wine pioneer and owner of Chateau Montelena, passed
Tom Mansell, Ph.D., Palate Press' Science Editor, offers a seven-part lecture in the science of wine. He discusses yeast, esters, flaws, and even how to fix some flaws. Tom is an entertaining and informative speaker. We hope you enjoy Wine Science Part 4, Reduction. d d d Wine Science, Part
Hardy Wallace gave himself one year to sell through his first significant release of wines from Dirty and Rowdy Family Winery in late August, 2012. It would be work, hand selling, lots of travel. If they could sell out in a year, it would be a sign that maybe this
In his outstanding volume The Art of Fermentation, Sandor Ellix Katz makes the disturbing proposition that rather than us having domesticated Saccharomyces cerevisiae – the yeast used to ferment wine as well as (most) beer and bread – S. cerevisiae has instead domesticated us. Katz is a fermentation wizard, the