What's your image of South African wine? Big-boned, smoky Pinotage, highly extracted Bordeaux blends, or super-ripe oaked Chenin and Chardonnay perhaps? These were the wine styles that put post-apartheid South Africa on the international wine map. You might be surprised if you tasted Jurgen Gouws's refreshing bottles. Visitors were scratching
It's that time of year again. This week we will be running our favorite articles from Palate Press staff writers. Evan Dawson's always insightful wine writing for Palate Press often covers the Rhône and here he revisits the "old vines make better wines" marketing trope. On a 97-degree day in France’s Northern Rhône Valley, I
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
It is a drizzly afternoon in late February when Stéphane Ogier drives me in his Range Rover to the top of a hillside overlooking the Rhône River and the small town of Seyssuel just north of Vienne. We bump along rutted, muddy farm lanes at the edge of a plateau
The divide in California wine seems simple: the coasts are cool, the interior is not. But then there's El Dorado. El Dorado doesn't neatly fit into any category. It's much cooler than most of California's interior because it's so far above sea level. In fact, the Fair Play subappellation, which
I had never been to Provence before, so I was excited by the prospect of going there this past fall. As a wine writer of more than 30 vendanges, I find myself in France at least two or three times each year, sometimes on a specific assignment, but often as
Thanksgiving is upon us, that glorious chaos of flavors that can defy even the savviest somm. Unless you sidestep the food issue and make it a mood pairing instead. Last year I felt traditional and drank like a Founding Mother: Madeira, sherry, cider, applejack, whiskey. Not all in one sitting.