Postcard from Sicily

SAMBUCO DI SICILIA, Sicily.   Somewhere straight ahead of me lies Africa — Tunisia, I think, though I haven’t consulted a map to confirm it.  I consider this as I sit on the little porch of our room at the Planeta winery on Sicily’s southwest coast and wonder how quickly, at after five in the…

Wine is sexy – but is it gendered?

SEAN SHESGREEN’S  scholarly paper “Wet Dogs and Gushing Oranges: Winespeak for the New Millenium“ is clever and entertaining enough to have been rejected by any self-respecting peer-reviewed journal. In it the former English professor describes the various ways in which wine writers have sought to describe and categorize wine over the last two centuries (wine-writing…

What makes it good? Part One

THE BELIEF THAT A FORTUITOUSLY-SITED vineyard can consistently produce wines of exceptional quality is at the very root of the notion of cru and appears to reach back to Pharaonic times.  From the medieval era to the mid-twentieth century the English relied upon the reputations of blender-shippers at the port of Bordeaux (above) as a…

The fog of wine

IN MOVIES OF A CERTAIN KIND (the kind I most like) fog plays a prominent role. I’m thinking of films like The Third Man,  Quai des Brumes, and Brief Encounter.  Fog evokes mystery, doubt, and a vague anxiety  – all lovely things when you’re longing to sink into something noirish. Wine and fog have some…

Michel Bettane on terroir

Former Classics professor Michel Bettane may be the most influential writer on wine in France today. With colleague Thierry Desseauve, he publishes Bettane & Desseauve’s Guide to the Wines of France.  Bettane has emerged as a vocal critic of  those who claim that organic certification is any guarantee of quality and has been particularly strident…