The Wine Idea

FOR AMERICANS, France’s Loire Valley is familiar as the source of the lively, mineral-inflected white wines of Sancerre and Muscadet. The region is also home to a broad, if less frequently encountered, range of red wines made from varietals such as cabernet franc, gamay (of Beaujolais fame), and the curious antique cultivar pineau d’aunis. Although…

CENTRAL BOTTLE  WAS POURING three so-called orange wines at its most recent Thursday Night Wine Bar event.   We’ve written twice before on a category (I’ll cite those posts momentarily), that remains a controversial one.  Why so?   Because these wines are exactly the opposite of what the Robert Mondavi-UC Davis Axis of Normal mandates…

IN WEDNESDAY’S BOSTON GLOBE FOOD SECTION we reported on our crawl of newish, higher-end burger joints in Atlanta, but last week we ducked out of town to snatch a few days in Montréal and Québec City. Our main interest, as you might guess, being the new & slightly used wine bars and restos there. To pack…

Was the deed done by Mother Nature, in the vineyard, with her little heat index?  Or was it done by Mr. Winemaker, in the cellar, by means of a doubled-barreled roto-fermenter? Thanks to Felix Salmon who blogs on a variety of subjects for Reuters and recently drew our attention to an article that appeared in the…

AXA is a big French insurance company that also owns a number of important wine properties. The wine part of the business is run by Englishman Christian Seely whose blog I peek in on now and then. I don’t normally find it the most interesting writing on the web, since it often has a promotional…

A WINEMAKER FORTUNATE ENOUGH to have a vineyard within a prestige appellation is entitled to the cachet the name conveys and earns a correspondingly high price for his wine. Another, whose property may be right next door but in different, more ordinary appellation, enjoys neither the cachet nor the higher price – despite the fact…

WHEN suppertime rolled around last Sunday night and I had an open bottle of a favorite red wine standing by (2008 Closerie des Alisiers Hautes Cotes de Beaune), I decided not to trek down to the cellar for another bottle – even though what was coming out of the oven made the choice a bit…

IF YOU HAVEN’T at least heard about the natural wine movement, it’s likely you haven’t been paying  attention. If you have been paying attention you probably know that it’s an amorphous phenomenon with heroes but no real leaders, that it’s fueled by a good deal of rhetoric and earnest manifesto-making, that it frequently marches in…

IT’S EASY TO FORGET that at one time the celebrated  vineyards of northern Europe were nothing more than wooded hillsides. The Romans, who generally took the long view of things, planted vines wherever they thought there was a chance they would thrive. The further north they moved, the more challenging viticulture became. In higher northern…

An email from Hamilton Russell Vineyards this week brought an item of interest. The star South African property has begun putting a small amount of its fine estate chardonnay into small, 160 liter clay amphorae. The amphorae, seen above, are lined with clay drawn from the property itself, which is located about 70 miles southeast…

IT’S WHERE THE EVERYDAY meets the can-you-believe-it that most interesting things happen; where risks and rewards run high; where people who know better (or think they do) often fear to tread. It’s true of all sorts of things – including wine. We offer chardonnay as a case in point. In warmer climes and at lower…

In his relentless campaign to build the reputation of California wine, Robert Mondavi liked to set Napa Valley against Europe in comparative tastings. According to witnesses, he would badger guests into conceding that while European wine was often good – California wines were “just a bit fruitier” — and by implication, just a bit better.…