Catching up with Cognac

Michelle Locke
Feature Stories
4 min read
You know you’re going old school when your guide opens a cellar door in Cognac and a bat comes flying at you. True story. And don’t get me started on the spiders. But while there’s beaucoup de history, heritage and cobwebby verisimilitude to be found in the home of France’s premium brown

Retsina Revolution

Simon J Woolf
Feature Stories
3 min read
Only half a year ago I was bemoaning the rise and rise of flavoured wines, when in May I found myself in a serious wine tasting being asked to evaluate one. No, it wasn't a “Rosé Pamplemousse”, “Girls night out Strawberry Samba” or “Gallo Brothers Wild Vines Raspberry Zinfandel” (I

Is wine becoming sweeter?

Erika Szymanski
Features
5 min read
Last week, the Smithsonian broke conceptual ground on a frozen “botanical garden,” storing samples of current plant life for future eventualities. I wish someone had thought to do the same for wine over the centuries, but freezing wasn't invented early enough. Even the glass bottle wasn't invented in time for

Wine museums: Drinking with culture

Elisabetta Tosi
Feature Stories
3 min read
What if you decide to visit a wine collection on your vacation or, even better, a museum entirely devoted to the amazing world of wine, for a change? When we say that “wine is culture” we are not just repeating a tremendous cliché, we are stating a simple truth. Wine

Mallorca: the Galápagos of grapes

W. Blake Gray
Features
7 min read
This might be the first serious wine article about Mallorcan wine in English since the advent of the Internet. In the pre-html era, Pliny the Elder praised it. Food & Wine's Ray Isle visited Mallorca in 2005, but his article was – duh! – about food AND wine. So I'm the guy to