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
We first encountered the Chemistry value wine brand — a partnership between the Oregon wineries Stoller and Chehalem — with its 2019 vintages. Now we’re back with a new look at two wines from the 2023 vintage and a nonvintage sparkling wine released alongside them. Note that some things have evolved in the last four…
A remarkable thing about Oregon-based Sealionne — pertinent but wine-adjacent: how low-key yet highly functional their website is for a brand in 2025. It conveys only the most minimal of information without extravagant pageantry customarily found on branded wine websites. There are no long, drawn-out narratives or timelines about family history, or terroir. Absent are…
We’ve tasted the wines of Castel Sallegg in the past, but never a pinot noir from this Alto Adige operation, which tends to focus on more traditional, native, mountain-friendly varietals. This expression of the iconic grape blends the smoldering fruit of a classic pinot noir with the gritty sensibility of northern Italy, layering earthy, almost…
It’s been more than a decade since we reviewed SakeOne‘s domestic sake lineup, which is brewed in Oregon and is one of the most widely available domestically produced sakes in the country. Here’s a look at three recent bottlings, including one older expression we’re trying again and some that are new to us. Momokawa Diamond…
The first slap of winter has arrived: howling wind at the windows, a trace of snow on everything and the urge to pile under heated blankets until March. As if on cue, two bottles from Italy’s Caparzo have also arrived, perfectly timed for the seasonal shift. A small comfort and a reminder that while the…
Did 2025 turn out the way you were expecting it to? The world’s gone so insane that, at this point, I don’t think anything that happens in the next 12 months could possibly surprise us. Did you also get the memo that the alcohol business is in massive decline? Turns out people stopped drinking, just…
Douro’s designation as Wine Enthusiast’s 2025 International Wine Region of the Year feels like a moment where North American wine drinkers decided to move from the comfortable aisles of their wine shop to notice the new terrain taking shape. For decades, Douro was framed primarily through the lens of Port: dowdy, obstinate, and bound to…
Italian white wines are diverse, distinctive, and delicious. But our stress today is on diverse. Italian whites can be strikingly different from each. It saddens me to think that many people limit their experience of Italian white wines to Pinot Grigio. Make no mistake, Pinot Grigio can be lovely, but there are many more adventurous…
Your first 2025 vintage wine of the year is here, and by that we of course mean the latest Beaujolais Nouveau, the ultra-fresh red made from gamay grapes that is intended for consumption before the end of the year. As we have frequently sampled, Georges Duboeuf sent us its current release, hot off the press.…
What if I told you you could find DOCG-class Chianti Classico for 20 bucks a bottle? Sometimes even as little as $12? Cecchi Storia di Famiglia is a slightly unconventional bottling of the wine — 90% Sangiovese and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon — but the approach works surprisingly well. The bright fruit of a traditional Sangiovese…