The Vintners of this Northern Rhône Appellation Fear the Kind of Development that Could Threaten its Vineyards The last thing you notice is the quiet. The first thing you notice is the hillside of vines diving below you. You’re surprised. This is Chablis, not Côte-Rôtie. The hills are supposed to
If you were asked to name three or four Italian wines that are the most highly respected all over the world, I bet most of you would include Amarone della Valpolicella. This red wine made with dried grapes has been appreciated by wine lovers forever, but its popularity has shot up
The unique terroir of the Côtes des Bar expresses itself well in this vintage. The 2015 harvest has drawn to a close in Champagne and overall everybody is very happy with the results. The hot summer boosted the ripeness levels, and in the end brought forward the harvest dates by
Spain is known for volume and it’s known for value. For vaunted wines of international renown? Not as much. Carlos Falcó and his fellow members of Grandes Pagos de España would like to change that. Falcó is one of the founders of GPE, a group promoting estate-grown, terroir-driven wines – pagos
Names are important. Let's consider two wine regions in Portugal: Ribatejo and Tejo. Ribatejo has a history of more than 250 years of producing boatloads – literally – of cheap wine, much of it sent in enormous containers to Portuguese colonies like Angola. Tejo (pronounced Tay-zhew), on the other hand, is
Drinking wine might be a mainstream activity, but reading about it is definitely niche. I'd wager that perhaps less than 1% wine consumers are likely to pick up a book on the subject, meaning that writing a tome about wine isn't the easy way to a bestseller. Occasionally something comes
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
On a 97-degree day in France’s Northern Rhône Valley, I was standing at the top of a vertiginous parcel of vines with a chain-smoking winemaker. There wasn’t a single part of Laurent Courbis that seemed coached or “media-trained” or careful. He was the picture of authenticity. And then he said