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Uncorking wine fraud without opening the bottle

Erika Szymanski
Features
6 min read
No one in this post-Rudy Kurniawan, post-fake Chinese Lafite wine world can remain ignorant about wine fraud. After decades of more or less ignoring the problem, lately it’s been all hands on deck. Legal authorities are systematizing how to punish offenders. Engineers are devising clever systems for keeping track of

Water and wine in drought-stricken California

Michelle Locke
Feature Stories
2 min read
Drive into the Cakebread Cellars parking lot and it seems fairly normal. Nicer and prettier than most, sure, but otherwise standard. But look a little closer and you discover a cleverly engineered facility designed to up the winery’s water game. The pavers are permeable and rest atop a foot of

Wine needs a Nordic Food Lab

Erika Szymanski
Features
5 min read
Wine needs a Nordic Food Lab. I’m not making a call for mealworm merlot or even necessarily for reclaiming ancient, lost grape varieties. I’m saying that wine needs a space for really off-the-wall research, done very well and in full view. If mealworm merlot just threw you for a loop

134 year-old California wine research: Conclusions pending

Erika Szymanski
Features
6 min read
In 1880, Dr. Eugene Hilgard asked the California state legislature for $3000 to start a wine research program at the University of California, and he got it. His first start-up – the “California Agricultural Experiment Station,” now transmogrified into the University of California Davis's massive agricultural extension program – had

The fine art of not drinking wine

Simon J Woolf
Feature Stories
3 min read
  Maybe this is a problem that no self-respecting wine lover should ever have. But it can happen – you cook up a storm in the kitchen on a Monday night, your significant other looks longingly at the wine rack – and quicker than you can say “Agiorgitiko” there's an