Chianti for 12/13/2023
I love Chianti, Italy's most famous red wine. Yet this crisp red has had to negotiate a maze of legal and stylistic problems in the last 50 years yet despite it all has retained a countrified persona...
View ArticleWhites Over Reds for 12/19/2023
If you're planning to have a bottle of bubbly to celebrate the new year, chances are pretty good that the wine will be either white or pink; the amount of red sparkling wine in this world is so small...
View ArticleDecanting Wine for 01/09/2024
All wines are "alive"— at least in the sense that they start out when they're young tasting fresh and vibrant and as they mature, they either improve or decline based on what the winemaking process was...
View ArticleWine Tipping for 01/16/2024
Dining out recently has become far more expensive than it was before COVID-19 closed restaurants, caused wine sales to tumble and altered how restaurants sell wine.The old formula that once existed...
View ArticleNo-Lo Is a Thing for 01/23/2024
I've been railing against higher-alcohol wines since they began appearing widely in this country in about 2000, and I received lots of criticism from people who saw me as anti-flavor. The real reason...
View ArticleLoire Valley Reds for 01/30/2024
Most U.S. wine drinkers prefer their red wines to be kind of soft, slightly sweet or at least not particularly tart. I really dislike this kind of wine — if I'm having it with food.I grew up with wine...
View ArticleDelicate White Wines for 02/06/2024
Just 40 years ago, wine was a kind of hit-or-miss beverage. But times change, and today almost every wine we see on the retail shelf or in a restaurant is perfectly sound.Spoilage was so rampant in the...
View ArticleWine Waiters for 02/13/2024
The dynamic between a wine waiter and a patron in a restaurant depends on whether it's an upscale coffee shop or a white tablecloth spot and can include arcane dialogue.This obviously depends on the...
View ArticleLower Alcohol Wines for 02/21/2024
Any definition you can find of the word "wine" also includes the word "alcohol." This includes wines that have no alcohol, which are occasionally called alcohol-free.However, the fact that we define...
View ArticleAging Wine for 02/27/2024
Twenty years ago, one of the questions I got asked most was, "How long do you think this wine will age before I drink it?"That was then. For about the last two decades, almost no one has asked me. The...
View ArticleOrdering Wine for 03/12/2024
Most Americans who dine out regularly know something about wine, but usually it's just enough to place an order.But that's not always true, and the problems that exist in these experiences can be...
View ArticleComplexity in Wine for 03/19/2024
Describing wine isn't easy. Casual wine lovers usually start with, "This stuff tastes good," or "It's pretty rough." More esoterically, we get truly abstruse descriptors such as "TDN,""brett," or...
View ArticleThe Bloom Is off the Rose for 03/26/2024
Rose wine has always intrigued me for many different reasons, so I never take it for granted. When it is good, it's very, very good.Of course, when it is bad ... well, you can finish that sentence.The...
View ArticleLower Alcohols for 04/02/2024
Wine is a simple beverage, primarily composed of the juice from grapes; the alcohol comes from the sugars in those grapes after fermentation.Basically, that's it. Yeast is added to create the...
View ArticleBuying From the Net for 04/09/2024
Most people buy wine conventionally: They go to a supermarket or a package store and peruse the shelves, lifting bottles, looking at labels, seeing what's new and then making a choice.Some people are a...
View ArticleLesser-Known White Wines for 04/16/2024
Quality white wines are a relatively new development in the wine world, and this category is really quite a recent addition to our dinnertime beverage choices.For centuries, white wine wasn't produced...
View ArticleAlcohol and Acid for 04/23/2024
Facing a wall of wine bottles in a store can be daunting since we don't know what kind of wine we're going to get, even if we think we know something.The problem is exacerbated by wineries around the...
View ArticleWine-Food Pairing for 04/30/2024
I was reviewing a classic Mandarin restaurant some years ago and was amazed at what I saw. The restaurant's food was made to go with aromatic white wines, but 13 of the 14 tables had chardonnays.Even...
View ArticleDining Out Woes for 05/07/2024
Food prices have risen in the last year, causing a cataclysmic decline in dining out. This is having a negative impact on the sale of wine in restaurants.If you're a regular restaurant-goer, even to...
View ArticleWine Weakness for 05/14/2024
The California wine business is undergoing a severe crisis based on consumers' changing drinking habits, and one consequence is that wine sales are drastically down from a year ago and gloom appears...
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