W. Blake Gray, Online Wine Columnist of the Year, and More

David Honig
Features
1 min read
Congratulations to Palate Press' own W. Blake Gray, winner of the prestigious Ramos Pinto Online Wine Columnist of the Year, in the 2013 Louis Roederer Wine Writers' Awards. Blake, a Columnist for Palate Press since 2010, was nominated for stories like Darth Vader is My Lover: Revalations about Brettanomyces in

Mexico’s Wine Woes: Attempting Water Into Wine

Michael Cervin
Feature Stories
6 min read
Beer and tequila are the traditional alcoholic beverages of Mexico. But the wine region of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula is changing dramatically, receiving many high scores from the American wine press, and a new breed of winemaker there is dedicated to producing premium wine. But the Mexican wine industry faces uphill

Wine Safety: Should you be Concerned?

Erika Szymanski
Features
7 min read
The last time wine safety really made the news was when, in 1985, some Austrian winemakers were found bulking up their wine with diethylene glycol. Used as an ingredient in some kinds of antifreeze, it added sweetness and body to wine, along with the potential for liver, kidney, and brain

The Grape Heaven of Horse Heaven Hills

Cole Danehower
Feature Stories
5 min read
It’s an ironic incongruity: the Pacific Northwest appellation with the fewest regularly open tasting rooms (only three of them) is the source of a quarter of Washington State’s wine grapes—and has contributed to the most 100 point-scoring Northwest wines. The Horse Heaven Hills AVA may not yet be wine touring

Virginia’s Millionaire Winegrowers

Roger Morris
Features
4 min read
For those of us who were writing about wine at the time, it was a surprising, even humorous-sounding, development.  The Italians were coming to Virginia to make wine. The year was 1976, and we had already been shocked once that season.  Napa Valley (with some help from Sonoma grapes) had

With Wine, Emotion Matters

David White
Features
2 min read
Wine enthusiasts are always looking for an experience that’s completely arresting -- a wine that stops you in your tracks, makes the room go silent, and just pulls you into the glass. Sometimes, those wines are expensive -- perhaps opened at an extravagant wine dinner where everyone brings a bottle

Going Wild in Alsace – Yeasts, Elegance and Spontaneity

Simon J Woolf
Features
8 min read
There's been a bit of a furore about wild yeast fermentation over the past month. The fires were stoked by new research published by scientists at the University of British Columbia and authored by graduate student Jessica M. Lange, summarized in Wine Business Monthly: “Regardless of which yeast started the