All posts by Stephen Meuse

In 2004, independent filmmaker and ex-sommelier Jonathan Nossiter administered a royal skewering to some of Big Wine’s biggest wigs with his quirky, accusatory documentary Mondovino.  In one of the film’s more memorable scenes, Michael Mondavi (son of the late Robert Mondavi) shares his dream of one day making wine on the moon. With a space program now…

By now it’s likely you’ve seen one of the new spots Verizon has rolled out touting the reach of their nationwide wireless network.  In the ads people are set in front of an easel spattered with colored dots, each representing a unit of network coverage for a particular carrier and asked to identify what they…

Some of the chief pleasures wine affords derive from the effects it produces on the special, hyper-sensitive tissue that lines the inside of our mouths – the way it grasps the lips, tongue and palate in a palpable, sensuous embrace. The food science term for this is mouthfeel, a term I find unbearably clinical for…

On Monday November 4th mobile-radio.net set up seven microphones in the Mosel Valley cellar of Rudolf and Rita Trossen to capture the sounds of the freshly-pressed 2013 vintage in the process of turning itself into wine.  The sounds were broadcast live for 17 hours over several Internet radio sites. You can listen to the little…

The Boston Globe Magazine recently published a story with my byline on sparkling wines for the holidays.  I had fun putting it together and editor Anne Nelson made a lovely two page spread of it,  but it left me a tiny bit unfulfilled.  The assignment — recommend 10 bubblies at a variety of price points worth…

Michael Schmelzer is the enologist and agronomist at Monte Bernardi, his family’s wine estate in Tuscany. The 130 acre property is in Panzano, the very heart of Chianti Classico (it’s said that the dead center – the ‘bellybutton’ – of the region runs through the property).  Schmelzer, 38, lives on the property with his wife Claudia,…

Here in Wine Corner, we often bring consumers into direct contact with the people who make their wine by hosting visiting winemakers and showcasing their products at our tasting table. But while events like this close the gap between vintners and consumers, they don’t necessarily illuminate the process by which a bottle finds its way…

This week’s New York Times magazine featured an interview with that Moses of U.S. specialty importers, Berkeley-based Kermit Lynch — and it’s well worth your time.  Lynch was an early advocate of what we would now call terroir wines, but has never been a terroiriste.  By this I mean that, so far as I know, he…

In Europe’s more northerly vineyards the harvest is underway as we write.  2013 has turned out to be a problematic year in many places, with yields down for a second or third straight year.  In the Loire Valley August hailstorms not only wiped out the current crop of grapes in some places, but damaged vines…

There’s something out there called the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory. It’s run by the University of Pennsylvania Museum and one of the things that keeps its inmates occupied is the examination of some of the oldest containers known for signs they once may have held alcoholic beverages.The idea is to determine when and where controlled fermentations were…

OLIVIER COUSIN FARMS 12 hectares (around 30 acres) and makes about 3000 cases of wine annually from gamay, chardonnay, cabernet franc, grolleau, and chenin blanc in the Layon Valley in the central Loire. His approach at Domaine Cousin-Leduc is self-consciously naturalist.  He works his vineyards with the draft horses you see above (hear him explain why in this…

CENTRAL BOTTLE HAS a real commitment to winemakers who do things the old-fashioned way, who work with traditional materials and methods, who make honest, authentic wine, who shrink from excessive manipulations in the cellar. The shorthand term we use to describe wines like this is ‘natural’, and it’s a useful term  .  .   .  …