Category: Recent Columns

Halloween is next week, but if you are giving wine advice it’s best to give your audience some time to act on it. Continue reading →

October begins the 17th year of this wine column. Reflections. Continue reading →

Scare headlines: “Drinking any alcohol is a cancer risk.” Well, okay, the question is how much of a risk? Continue reading →

If you go into almost any wine shop, liquor store, or supermarket wine section in the United States—and now in most places in the world—you will find wine bottles arranged and named by the variety of grape used to make the wine. Continue reading →

Winemakers: To oak or not to oak, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take up oak to craft your wine to shake the spheres of ordinary. Continue reading →

What makes a great wine? There is a hard and fast answer: “great wine comes from great vineyards.” Continue reading →

Wine is your friend, especially when sipped with friends during a convivial meal. You are obliged to protect it from its enemies. Continue reading →

Wine snobbery is a detestable trait. But you can be a “good” wine snob. Here’s how. Continue reading →

Even if you only dip your big toe into wine wonkiness, you likely encounter the term “malolactic fermentation” or MLF. What is that? Continue reading →

Wine is fermented grape juice, an agricultural product like green beans and corn. But that is not how we think about wine. Why? Continue reading →