All posts in May 2024

From time to time, winemakers will drop by our cellar to present and talk up their wines  We love having an in-person opportunity to ask all kinds of questions about how and why they do things as they do. Of particular interest to us is how a particular wine gets to be the way it…

Millions of wine drinkers rely on tasting notes provided by celebrity critics to direct their wine-buying. I’m not going to argue the advisability of such practice except to note that one of the shortcomings of these reports is the way they actually play out. In a venue where as many as a hundred wines await…

Is this seat taken? No? How lucky for me! Mind if I plop down? Chances are that we’ve met before, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised or offended if my face (if one can call it a face) isn’t familiar. It would have been over another glass of wine; a Côtes du Rhône, likely…

A vigorous world trade in wine had existed for perhaps a thousand years when the western Roman Empire collapsed and cities, key hubs of both mercantile organization and of customers keen for the product, fell into decline and decay. Late classical civilization didn’t disappear utterly, but was dealt a severe blow. As a new order…