With summer beginning today, terrific summer wine you may not have heard about, and a wine even your friends who don’t think they like wine may enjoy. Continue reading “Vinho Verde”
Category: Wine & Grapes
Bonarda
Asked to name the top grape in Argentina, surely you boldly bellowed “bonarda!” Continue reading “Bonarda”
Colombard
Baby Boomer? You probably got your white wine initiation with French Colombard. Continue reading “Colombard”
Syrah/Shiraz
Wine black humor: “What is difference between a case of Syrah and a case of pneumonia? You can get rid of a case of pneumonia.” Continue reading “Syrah/Shiraz”
Gamay grape
Waggish wine wisdom: Gamay grapes are wine world’s simplest red grapes and make the only white wine that happens to be red. Continue reading “Gamay grape”
Sémillon
Sémillon is grape that stars in improbable marriages: with Sauvignon Blanc in classic blends made in France and Australia; with fungus Botrytis cinerea in Sauternes region of Bordeaux to create world’s longest-lived unfortified wines. Continue reading “Sémillon”
Cabernet Franc
Cabernet Franc is an important grape variety for a variety of reasons: its progeny, its role as a ubiquitous blending grape, as insurance, and—finally—as a splendid lead grape in its own right. Continue reading “Cabernet Franc”
Pinot Gris/Pinot Grigio
Pinot Gris–Pinot Grigio. Same grape, often not same wine. Continue reading “Pinot Gris/Pinot Grigio”
Barbera
Barbera is a grape similar to Longfellow’s girl with the curl. When it is good, it is very good indeed. And when it is bad, it is horrid. Continue reading “Barbera”
Bordeaux or Burgundy?
Great debates of Western Civilization: boxers or briefs, Ginger or Mary Ann, Rolling Stones or Beetles? Among oenophiles: Bordeaux or Burgundy? Continue reading “Bordeaux or Burgundy?”