The Wine Idea

Millions of wine drinkers rely on tasting notes provided by professional critics to guide their wine-buying.  Recently there’s been quite a bit written that’s skeptical about just how reliable such notes are.  I’m not going to address this contentious issue today, except to note that one of the serious shortcomings of these notes is the…

 Winemakers with property on the steep hillsides that overlook Germany’s Mosel River between Trier and Koblenz enjoy a worldwide market for their cooly aromatic, austerely-structured white wines. The road to success in the Mosel hasn’t always been paved with euros, however.  For most of the 19th century, the region was trapped in a vicious cycle…

The bold adventurers who first landed on the shores of what they thought of as the New World didn’t come alone. The newcomers brought horses and pigs to the Americas, and returned bearing the potatoes, tomatoes, squashes and maize that would subsequently enrich the diet of generations of Europeans. Though the Americas had native grapevines…

The chalkboard that hangs over our wine corner shelves lists a hundred or so lesser-known grapes from which wine is made today. It stands as a tediously hand-lettered warning to those who believe a passing familiarity with Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Merlot punches their ticket into the fellowship of wine know-somethings. But even…

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are you yourself and not someone else? Where do babies come from?  Such good questions!  Thanks to all of you who send these, and many like them, to us in the mail every week. They’re potent reminders that from time to time one needs to turn one’s…

What makes one wine better (and more expensive) than another? It’s not the easiest question to answer, but it helps to understand that there are really only a handful of factors that can be relied on to produce quality in wine. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that each of them means extra expense…

The few weeks sandwiched between yuletide and the onset of Lent in February may well have been the only time a medieval European could be reasonably sure of enjoying a glass of fresh, sound wine. Wine merchants raced to get the current vintage safely in barrel and on the water to their various markets while…

It was in shabby but comfy French cafés that I learned that common folk typically took their wine in tumblers – and decided that, since I was common folk myself, I should henceforth do the same. Over the years my wife and I have collected some nicer glassware, only some of it on purpose. Not…

Oak barrels have been important in winemaking for a very long time, and the spice and vanilla flavors they impart are by now familiar. The drama added by aging in new oak became so associated with prestige California Chardonnay that even wines without price points capable of supporting the cost of fresh casks each vintage…

The answer is yes, I think, so long as you can set the question firmly within a context. The era matters, as does the place. If you lived in an isolated village in the Caucasus, where for millennia every family made its own wine from a modest backyard vineyard, an ideal wine would simply be…

It’s a question we ask ourselves nearly every day – not so much because we worry about the breadth of our posterior parts (though this is never far from our minds), but because we’ve all been around the drinks business long enough to know that a glass of wine is never just a few ounces…

Unaccountably, many people who are perfectly capable as both cooks and hosts find themselves at sixes and sevens when it comes to bringing suitable wines to their holiday tables. Since I can’t guess what will be going on in your house, or what your guests like and don’t like in wine, the best advice I…