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
I’d wager you’re unfamiliar with any of the terms in the name of the wine in this review… and to be honest I had to look up the Madiran region on a map myself. Here’s what you need to know: Madiran is a tiny spot of land in southwest France (you’ll sometimes see these wines…
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I came to this Rhone-style blend with no real expectations. I don’t even know where the bottle came from. Color me surprised. Just sitting in the glass, three feet away, it fills the air around you with heavenly berry scents, cherry, raspberry, a precious hint of spice, and lush fruit. Blended from 44% Grenache, 40%…
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Hey, Chianti isn’t the only Italian wine out there, folks. Give Travaglini’s Gattinara a try. Even if you don’t like it, you’ll enjoy talking about the bottle, I promise. This wine is from Gattinara in Italy’s Piedmont region and is 100% Nebbiolo, the critical grape in Barolo wines. As with Barolo, Gattinara can be big…
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Sebastiani is a big, big winery. I can’t even go to their tasting room any more because of the overpowering antiseptic smell in there the last time I went. You try tasting wine when all you can smell is Clorox and Lysol. Doesn’t work. My dad (a huuuuge Sebastiani fanatic) gave me a bottle of…
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I have never been a huge fan of the in-yo-face jamminess of Zinfandel, but once in a while, a really lush Zin, one that balances that fruitiness with spice (or something else) really catches me by the palate. Robert Rue is a small producer that won tons of raves for its 2004 Wood Road bottling.…
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Facing a huge wine list or a silent auction and don’t know if 2001 was a good year for California Cabernet? You can’t exactly whip out a reference book or a laptop at the table and look up the wine. (I guess if you have an iPhone you’re in good shape, but really…) Enter the…
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Thirty-six wines in two hours… though we were out in 90 minutes. The trick with big wine events like this is to pace yourself and be able to maintain enough clarity to properly evaluate what you’re drinking, and at a pre-auction event, you have another challenge: There’s only one bottle of each wine available for…
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Willowbrook is a relatively new producer of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines, and if this bottling is any judge, it’s certainly one to watch. Right out of the gate this Pinot comes on strong. If you’re looking for a lighter, Beaujolais-style Pinot, you’ve come to the wrong place. This Kastania Vineyard (in the southern part…
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Owl Ridge was so kind to send a bottle of their 2003 Cabernet, following a redesign of their label to give it a little more sophistication and upscale appeal. The label looks good, I think, and the wine isn’t bad either. This Sonoma cab is characteristic of the region, though I am not specifically familiar…
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Sideways made Merlot unpopular, and it’s still fashionable to bash the grape and the wine it makes. And you know what? The bashers have a point. Merlot is one of the least interesting wines around. It’s the red wine equivalent of chenin blanc. And in fact, I have more chenin in my wine cellar than…
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