Wine
While wine can be made from many types of fruits and flowers, it is iconically produced from fermented grapes. Wine production dates back at least 8000 years, and today it is produced in quantity in more than 70 countries, with Italy, Spain, France, and the United States the largest producers of wine today. The world of wine is vast and complex, with more than 10,000 grape varietals in existence. This is largely due to experimental cross-breeding and grafting that has taken place for millennia, and such experiments have led to some of today’s most popular grape varieties, including Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. The primary styles of wine today include red, white, and rose. While almost all grape juice itself is white, red wine is made by allowing the juice from black (aka red) grapes to ferment in contact with its skins, while white wine is usually (but not always) made from white grapes. Rose wine is made from black grapes with limited skin contact, which provides the pinkish color.
Top Wine Posts:
Understanding the Wines of France
Wine and Beer Touring in California’s Paso Robles, 2017
Touring and Wine Tasting in California’s Anderson Valley
Harvest in Chile’s Casablanca Valley – A Dusty Paradise
Chateau Montelena’s Dream Tasting: A Retrospective of Five Decades of Wine
Exploring Port Wine: Touring Porto and the Douro Valley
Visiting Tuscany’s Tenuta dell’Ornellaia
Best known perhaps for its pinot noirs, Sokol Blosser also makes a variety of white wines. This crisp Oregon pinot gris offers sauvignon blanc-like character, with sharp minerals intermixed with some apple, apricot, and peach ...
In the pampas, money talks. This is my lesson, my one takeaway about the state of Argentinian wine: You get what you pay for, and if you’re willing to shell out for high-end malbec (and ...
Our third annual “cheat sheet” arrives today, with the goal of giving a very basic shorthand into what’s a “good year” and what’s otherwise in the world of wine. As with last year’s edition, here’s ...
Don’t let the price fool you: Coto de Imaz’s 2004 Reserva Rioja is a surprisingly drinkable, mature, and enchanting wine. Inexpensive Spanish wine is not normally something I’d recommend, Coto de Imaz is impressive for ...
Massive apologies to my friend Renee Humphrey for being so terribly slow at getting this tasting report online from our visit over a week ago. Renee (who refused to be photographed) led me through two ...
Our friends at Olson Ogden were kind enough to send their full lineup of 2007 wines for our review now that they’re on the cusp of actually being released. I’ve tried four of the five ...
Had the chance to sit down with Ravenswood Winery’s founding winemaker Joel Peterson this week and sample his 2007 old vines lineup. The son of a woman who worked on the atomic bomb and a ...
The Winepod gizmo I used to create my own Chateau de Null may no longer be for sale — a victim of the recession that made $4,500 DIY wine urns a tough sell — but ...
Recent vintages of Silver Oak have not really impressed me, and that’s sad — in the ’90s, Silver Oak was one of the most reliable wines you could buy… and you paid for that reliability, ...
Readily available at your typical supermarket, the Cupcake Vineyards label is a solid value for everyday drinking. Some thoughts on two recent varietals follow. 2008 Cupcake Riesling is extremely dry for this varietal, harvested from ...
