If you've ever thought about laying wine down for a few years or more, how can you know what to expect when the wine has been aged in oak? How can you tell when a wine will integrate that oak and when it will succumb to it? One of the
Without a doubt, one of the most recognizable styles of wine in the world is Champagne. Regardless of your level of wine knowledge, or even if you despise the beverage with all of your being, you know Champagne. It is the standard for hip-hop videos, World Series Championship celebrations and
In a most delicious twist of serendipitous weather, we are producing here in California what I’m calling “adult” wines. That is, because of a confluence of maturation in the marketplace and three consecutive cool growing seasons—2009, 2010, and 2011—we’re seeing wines that are more balanced, more elegant, and wines that
Heaven, it turns out, is exactly how I had always hoped it would be; a small restaurant with tables looking out over a vineyard, a glass of fine Pinot Noir at hand and duck. Slow roasted, melt off the bone, duck confit to be precise. “Ah, le confit, but of
If you open more than a few bottles of wine per week, it’s probably already too late. No, I’m not talking about your health or your sanity, but about your kitchen drawers. They're likely choked with wine paraphernalia—gizmos to open wine and to serve it, to pour it and store
Residual sugar seems like an obvious concept. Residual sugar. Sweet stuff, left over. In wine. But like many concepts in the wine world, it’s not that simple. Yeast eat sugar to make alcohol. This much we all know. So why would the yeast stop before all the sugar is gone?
It’s a cliché to say this, but in the U.S., Romanian wine is as mysterious as a Transylvanian castle. In fact, Transylvania is one of the three major wine-growing areas of Romania, I learned this summer when some of that country’s major wine producers paid a visit to New York
Arguably the world's pre-eminent wine region, Bordeaux is not readily associated with emerging trends like natural or low-intervention winemaking. In this region, the celebrity Crus classés [Classified Growths] have transitioned from mere wine producers into luxury brands, and protecting those brands—read not taking risks—is their major priority. Pontus Elofsson, head