Countdown to New Year’s Eve: Franciacorta

Becky Sue Epstein
Feature Stories
3 min read
Never heard of Franciacorta? No worries. It’s this week’s featured sparkling wine. [Franciacorta -- pronounced FRAN-sha KOR-tah] Each week until the end of the year we’ll take a look at different types of sparkling wines – champagne included, of course – so you’ll be able to make a great choice for your

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

Rare beer styles: From Adambier to Zwickelbier

Tom Mansell
Beer Reviews
3 min read
Continuing our list from yesterday, we have some rare and obscure beer styles notable for their unique preparation, be it barrel aging, unfiltered character, or oddball ingredients. Adambier Adambier is probably the most obscure of the bunch, with only a handful of examples on sites like RateBeer or Untappd. It’s

Rare Beer Styles: Rated “G”

Tom Mansell
Beer Reviews
3 min read
Quick: name five beer styles that begin with “G.” No, “German” doesn’t count. As one dives deeper and deeper into the world of beer, drinking can become a history lesson. Intrepid brewers across the country are reviving extinct and forgotten styles, much to the delight of a typically adventurous craft

Bubbles Amid the Storm

Michelle Locke
Feature Stories
4 min read
  After a wet year, Ferrari winemakers keep calm, carry on in Trento, Italy. Walking through hillside vineyards on a seductively beautiful fall day, bands of golden sunshine draped over serried rows of green, Ferrari winery vice president Marcello Lunelli is searching for a word to describe the worst growing

In Italy, a tough vintage

Elisabetta Tosi
Feature Stories
4 min read
“We work in a factory without a roof, and have to accept what the sky gives us… but I have never seen a summer like this,” sighs the old grape grower. Living in an area of wine production puts me in touch with the daily problems, hopes, joys and frustrations of

Are millennials wine illiterate?

W. Blake Gray
Features
4 min read
Are millennials illiterate? Uninterested in where wine comes from? Or are they wine's Greatest Generation? My working assumption has been the latter: that people in their 20s are willing to spend money on wines from anywhere, and are more concerned with drinking something interesting than impressing their peers.   But