Joe Roberts, Author at Palate Press

6 min read

Well over ninety percent of all wines produced are meant to be consumed within a year of their bottling. For the remaining few percent -- which include what most would consider the greatest still wines being produced in the world – how long do they have before they outlive their pleasurable Read More

Heroic Viticulture on the island of Pantelleria

Joe Roberts

Features Wine Spotlight

4 min read

Even in a wine world where context is king, Donnafugata’s complex sweet wine called Ben Ryé - the product of air-dried Zibbibo (Muscat) grapes - stands out as uniquely tied to its place of origin. Second generation winegrowers Antonio and José Rallo, who helm the Sicilian winery, describe its production Read More

Forward to the Past: the wines of Terre di Pisa

Joe Roberts

Features

6 min read

Utter the word “Tuscany,” and your mind will likely conjure up images of rolling hills, sunny skies, and the dueling monocultures of olive groves and grapevines. And your mind would be right, because most of Tuscany looks exactly like stepping into a painting, photograph, or landscape shot from Under the Read More

Paso Robles: Sorry, not sorry

Joe Roberts

Features

5 min read

“It’s… outsized. We get big tannins, big fruit, big acid, and big extraction.” That’s how Calcareous Vineyards winemaker Jason Joyce describes the types of wines that the Paso Robles region is naturally calibrated to produce. Even by New World wine standards, Paso Robles has climate conditions that some might consider Read More

Faces of Ruchè

Joe Roberts

Features

6 min read

Piedmont's other red grape comes onto the world market with a new, colorful cast of winemaking characters. This is the first in a two-part series on Ruchè this week on Palate Press. For lovers of obscure wine finds, the sleepy little town Italian town of Grana might be the next destination Read More

The Mother Vine: Livermore Reconsidered

Joe Roberts

Features Wine Spotlight

5 min read

That California’s Livermore Valley is largely off the radar for wine geeks and collectors is one of the more bizarre turns in the history of U.S. wine. While rarely mentioned in the same breath as Napa Valley, Sonoma County, or Paso Robles, it could easily be argued that no other Read More

Southern California Dreamin’: How Ventura County’s Micro Wineries Are Trying to Break Through

Joe Roberts

Features

5 min read

If American winemaking has a twenty-first century mantra, it’s “great wine is made in the vineyard.” The concept of terroir – of the place where grapes are born triumphing over the actions of winemakers when producing fine wine – is inescapable, even for an area that remains the young upstart Read More

State of the Un-Commonwealth: Pennsylvania’s Struggle To Produce Quality Fine Wine

Joe Roberts

Features

7 min read

It's a warm August day in the hills of Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, a stretch of land that forms one of the most productive non-irrigated farming areas in all of the United States. In the tank room of Jan Waltz's winery, the better part of a dozen winemakers from across the Read More

Author Joe Roberts