All posts by Stephen Meuse

How mysterious is taste? Let’s begin by observing that by time-honored consensus, there’s no accounting for it. Meaning, as we take it, that there’s no way to demonstrate conclusively why one person is drawn to something another is repelled by or, on another level, is merely indifferent to. Reasons can always be brought forward to…

The national authorities responsible for such things have strict rules about what can be said on a wine label. But there’s always room for creativity, and it can be hard to know where legally sanctioned terms leave off and marketing begins. In the latter category are references to the age of vines that are the…

Read magazines and websites devoted to wine and you can’t help but notice how much attention is paid to news about recent vintages here and there – where the weather was good or not so good and what we might expect when the wines from those vintages come on line in a year or two…

Lovers of wine and the wine vine can be found all over the world, in every known clime and on every inhabited continent. Meanwhile, the places where wine can actually be produced are confined to a relatively narrow strip of our dear old Earth, positioned between about 30 and 50 degrees north and south latitudes.…

The prosperous and populous states of the European north continue to put the squeeze on their poorer relations in the south, with the predictable result that the putters upon are heartily resented by those put upon. It’s not clear whether the north will ultimately succeed in imposing its brand of fiscal restraint on the south,…

Climate change is real and our globe is warming at an alarming rate.  In the decades to come, scientists say, the sweet spot for wine grape farming may shift dramatically to the north (south, if you’re in the nether hemisphere).  We’ve seen maps that locate the new U.S. center of wine gravity in latitudes that…

I must have been shifting cases in the deepest, darkest recesses of the Formaggio wine cellar when Isabelle Legeron, Master of Wine (who also chooses to be known as That Crazy French Woman) published her book on natural wine a few years ago. Having read it, I heartily endorse it. One aspect I found particularly…

Real journalism isn’t created in newsrooms, but in the places where news actually happens. That’s why from time to time your intrepid correspondent dons trench coat and fedora and leaves the confines of his cozy garret to get the story. And so, when, earlier this week, the rare opportunity arose to cop an interview with (HELLO!!)…

The golden age of Dutch art coincided with that nation’s high water mark as a commercial powerhouse.  In the first half of the seventeenth century, its merchant navy dwarfed England’s. The French, at that point, weren’t even in the running – though they saw the danger and began frantically planting the oak forests they would…

You have a nose and so do we. Some have more nose than others:  Cyrano (permanently, above) and Pinocchio (episodically, not shown) come to mind.  Wine also has a nose — at least that’s how we often refer to the aromatic profile it presents to us. Both kinds of noses prove to be frightfully complicated things…

It is a curious yet widely unremarked-upon thing that the world of wine is considered to exist entirely in the physical spaces where vines grow, fruit is harvested and wine is vatted and bottled.  The notion that wine is inextricably linked with tangible terrain is reinforced by atlases that plot areas of wine activity on…

It’s only four letters, and not likely to make any sixth grader slap his forehead in frustration. But not all spelling challenges involve bees, Scrabble games, or even letters. Musicians are said to spell chords when they analyze them into their constituent tones, for example. Someone seeking the details of how something happened may ask…