Sharpen your poison pens, sommeliers, because you're going to hate this column. When I'm dining in one of the trendy restaurants I love, I often think about how impenetrable the wine list must look to the uninitiated. But all of us reading this, we know what Quincy and Alicante Bouschet
Congratulations to Palate Press' own W. Blake Gray, winner of the prestigious Ramos Pinto Online Wine Columnist of the Year, in the 2013 Louis Roederer Wine Writers' Awards. Blake, a Columnist for Palate Press since 2010, was nominated for stories like Darth Vader is My Lover: Revalations about Brettanomyces in
This month we have the premiere of a movie that walks the taut line between wine porn and edutainment -- starting with its opening scenes. Any serious wine lover, such as myself, is going to be adding Saint Estephe’s Cos d’Estournel’s barrel room to their must-see list. The idea for
Beer and tequila are the traditional alcoholic beverages of Mexico. But the wine region of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula is changing dramatically, receiving many high scores from the American wine press, and a new breed of winemaker there is dedicated to producing premium wine. But the Mexican wine industry faces uphill
The last time wine safety really made the news was when, in 1985, some Austrian winemakers were found bulking up their wine with diethylene glycol. Used as an ingredient in some kinds of antifreeze, it added sweetness and body to wine, along with the potential for liver, kidney, and brain
It’s an ironic incongruity: the Pacific Northwest appellation with the fewest regularly open tasting rooms (only three of them) is the source of a quarter of Washington State’s wine grapes—and has contributed to the most 100 point-scoring Northwest wines. The Horse Heaven Hills AVA may not yet be wine touring
For those of us who were writing about wine at the time, it was a surprising, even humorous-sounding, development. The Italians were coming to Virginia to make wine. The year was 1976, and we had already been shocked once that season. Napa Valley (with some help from Sonoma grapes) had
Wine enthusiasts are always looking for an experience that’s completely arresting -- a wine that stops you in your tracks, makes the room go silent, and just pulls you into the glass. Sometimes, those wines are expensive -- perhaps opened at an extravagant wine dinner where everyone brings a bottle