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
The Hilt Estate can be found in California’s Santa Rita Hills, where it creates a range of wines including Riesling, Syrah, and its flagship releases of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, under the guidance of winemaker Matt Dees. Today we look at The Hilt’s estate-grown Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, both from the standout 2023 vintage. 2023…
Alto Adige occupies one a curious corner of Italian wine. Tucked into Italy’s far north against the Austrian border, it carries a distinctly dual identity, shaped by Italian and Germanic influence in language, culture, and winemaking. Alpine peaks dominate the landscape, but the vineyards benefit from a surprisingly varied climate, with daytime sun and warm…
Chile’s Miguel Torres is the brand behind Serena Mode, a new non-alcoholic brand made from real varietal fruit — listed on the label — and vintage-dated. Two dealcoholized expressions are currently available. Let’s give them a try. 2024 Serena Mode 0.0 Sauvignon Blanc – A big, juicy, golden grape juice experience, this is a fairly…
The Baldacci family has established itself as a perennial favorite on the site, often making post-review encore appearances on our curated roundups of top 10 wines. Their familiarity is not without solid justification: nearly three decades into the winery’s run, the story is less about chasing notoriety than building something of high-quality reliability: something to…
Epoch is a Paso Robles wine producer with serious charitable goals, in fact it has a wine that’s completely dedicated to them. The Gratitude program is a collaborative project that has generated over $43,000 for charitable causes across three vintages so far, including support for victims of the LA wildfires and the central Texas floods.…
We’ve been covering Paso Robles-based Harvey & Harriet‘s red wine blends for a few years, but somehow the white blend from this Booker Wines label has eluded us. Blended from an exotic mix of Chardonnay, Albariño, Viognier, and Pinot Grigio, it’s a wine that promises all kinds of action. Let’s see how well it delivers.…
Alma Rosa Winery makes its home near the El Jabali estate in the the Santa Rita Hills of California, a vineyard originally planted by pioneer Richard Sanford in 1983. Today, Alma Rosa has been run by winemaker Samra Morris since 2019, where she turns out chardonnay and pinot noir wines, along with some Rhone-styled offerings.…
Priest Ranch dates its origins to 1869 when it was established by James Joshua Priest, a Gold Rush prospector, but the start of its current operation more properly dates to 2004, when the grounds were consolidated with the Elder Valley properties to become the Somerston Estate. The estate includes 224 acres of vineyards across 15…
It’s our second year running looking at the sparkling wines of Roederer, perhaps the most iconic sparkling wine producer in the U.S. (not to mention France). Let’s dive back in! NV Roederer Estate Brut Anderson Valley (2026) – Still a multivintage blend of 40% pinot noir and 60% chardonnay, with 10 to 15% reserve wine…
We’ve been tasting Renato’s Barolo wines on and off since 2016. Today we tuck into this producer’s offerings — with updates stretching to the 2021 vintage. We hope to update this coverage as future vintages arrive. 2016 Renato Ratti Barolo Marcenasco DOCG Review One look at the light color of this wine and it…