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Content about Vintage

March 10, 2013
Fine Tuning

A conundrum: Estates are always upgrading techniques and facilities.  So why do so many older vintages taste delicious?

Great wine estates, and wine estates striving to be great, often give much contemplation and spend huge amounts of money making incremental changes they believe will make their wines even better or at least not let them fall behind their competitors.

February 14, 2013
Blind Revelations

A no-peek tasting confirms Cape Mentelle makes a really good Cabernet - and that wine writers are experts in what we like and don't.

Although I prefer seeing the bottle label when I’m my writing tasting notes, blind tastings can be fun for what they tell us about wine regions and categories as well as what they tell us about ourselves as wine writers and critics.

August 12, 2012
Insider's Guide to Rioja

Ana Fabiano's new book tells us the stories of this classic region, plus introduces us to its winemakers.

I’ve always felt the best wine writers are not those who give ratings or who get hung up in the pedigrees of classic vintages or who clog your brain with details as though they were studying for their sommelier exams.  The best wine writers are those who tell interesting stories, give great word pictures of places and people you may not have seen and who explain with some imagination how t

February 1, 2012
Vertical of the Century's First Decade

As a vertical tasting of Chateau d'Issan's first 10 vintages of the 21st Century shows, Bordeaux wines are flying high at a level of consistent quality not previously experienced.

It seems like only minutes ago that we were deciding what Champagne we were buying to drink in the new century while worrying whether we were going to catch the millennium bug.  But already we have raced through the first decade of the 21st Century and are well into the second.

December 14, 2011
Wines of Terroirs Originels

A small group of Beaujolais and Macon winegrowers discover that working together on quality and marketing is a pathway to success.

There is a commonality among restaurateurs and winemakers that is crucial to both, but which is sometimes ignored by both – at their own considerable peril.

February 28, 2011
Thoughts on Open That Bottle Night

An annual wine celebration highlights the differences in how people who drink a lot - professionally or as learned amateurs - prefer to enjoy and evaluate their wines.

January 26, 2011
Creative Wine Buying in a Down Market

We all know that the image of a restaurant with patrons enjoying the open bottles of wine on their table sends a message that you are at a wine destination. 

January 19, 2011
The Master Blender of Porto

Whether making Champagne, first-growth Bordeaux or California Meritage, the challenge of blending from the various cuvees is the highest of the winemaker's cellar arts.  None does in better - or has more on the line - than Natasha Brid