Wine at the Rodeo means Big Competition

Mike Riccetti
Feature Stories
4 min read
That one of the world’s biggest wine competitions is associated with a rodeo might come as a surprise.   The images of an oenophile studiously judging wine and one of a cowboy flailing atop a frantically bucking bronco across a dirt-laden corral are a bit discordant, but the fact that the

The Ghost Grape: Renaming “Tocai”

Elisabetta Tosi
Feature Stories
5 min read
Surrounded by a sea of vineyards with a few rural houses sprinkled here and there, a tall white tower rises up in the countryside close to the small village of San Martino della Battaglia. The setting is Northern Italy, near Venice. Here on the 24th of June 1859, a bloody

Rías Baixas: Spain’s Little Green Giant

Roger Morris
Feature Stories
4 min read
Using a patchwork system of thousands of growers, Rias Baixas makes certain you are never without a glass of Albariño. It is the third evening of my recent tour of Rías Baixas, and there is again a gentle drizzle as we walk the narrow, ancient streets of Pontevedra en route to

Blind Tasting: Unreliable but Necessary

W. Blake Gray
Features
4 min read
Blind tasting is an artificial experience. Consumers don't taste wines blind, except as a game. If you really want to enjoy a glass of wine, you need to know what it is. Where it came from. Who made it. Its story. But blind tasting is essential for critics. It's the

The Lugana Lottery

Simon J Woolf
Features
3 min read
Tasting note: Intense bouquet of mushrooms and stale toffee, with fecal overtones. Great gobs of vinegar, wet earth and unripe apple, with a persistent finish of candle wax. Tempting? I'm describing the typical profile of white wines that have been matured – more like abandoned – way beyond their shelf