All posts by Stephen Meuse

Why is a set of wines arranged in a particular order for tasting purposes referred to as a flight? Even the venerable Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t seem to know. Its editors don’t give an example of the word used in this way. In wondering about the use of the term in this context, it’s natural…

In my mind, he wine experience is readily categorized into three distinct areas of operations. And, while two of these, the making of wine and its imbibing, draw the bulk of the attention, the area lying chronologically between them — activities connected with the keeping, serving or polite consumption of wine — I find frequently neglected. What constitutes…

If you love the world of wine, there’s no corner of its territory that’s without interest – not a single one you wouldn’t care to explore if you had the time and pocket money.  A field of vines set in orderly array has the same aesthetic appeal wherever it’s found, yet every vineyard is somehow…

Most of us turn to wine, if not as a vehicle of relaxation, at least as a gateway to it. If you’ve gone so far as to acquire the apéritif habit, the first glass of the day typically marks the moment you’ve set work aside and begun the slow, evening unwind. Later, there may be…

Shall we call them microflora or microfauna?  That depends on whether you categorize them among the plants or the animals. And since the biologists don’t seem to be able to give an unambiguous answer, who are we to presume to know?  All we can say for sure is that absent the vast, unseen and unremunerated…

They come from the mountains or the desert, most often – wild, uncultivated places where the hand of man has yet to make much of an imprint. They are themselves of this character: roughshod, unshaven and not exactly fresh from the bath. They have bees in their bonnets. They are not in the mood for…

Thinking about how we think about wine can be an enlightening exercise — and a humbling one. As an example, consider the ways we organize wines in a retail setting. Routinely, it’s a bit like the brochures in a travel agency — which is to say, by destination. Thus, the Italian wines huddle in their…

The great — perhaps greatest of all — French actor Jean Gabin (above) is one of many to have played Georges Simenon’s beloved Paris police inspector Jules Maigret on the big screen, and is, for us, the only one to have truly inhabited the character. One of Gabin’s more indelible, though oft overlooked, performances is…

Our brain’s ability to store visual images in memory and more or less instantly compare them with new inputs for similarities and dissimilarities is impressive. Rather than deal with the many individual features each of these memories contain, we find it more efficient to stitch the bits together into patterns we can more readily utilize.…

How far back containers go in pre-history is impossible to say, though no doubt it’s very far indeed. Those early human groups who traveled in small, mobile bands across the landscape are known as hunter-gatherers, after all, and what is gathered must be carried. We can guess that woven baskets were primeval; and that the…

In movies of a certain kind (think  The Third Man, Port of Shadows,  Brief Encounter) fog plays a prominent role.  Its presence evokes mystery, doubt, and a vague anxiety  – all lovely things when you’re longing to sink into something entertainingly noirish. Wine and fog have some associations, too. 

There’s the noble grape of Barolo,…

The impending (or perhaps only threatened) 100% tariffs on some European luxury goods has the wine industry in a tizzy – as well it might. As Jenny Lefcourt, an importer of natural wines outlined in a recent New York Times letter to the editor, the industry has a deep reach into American business and the…