Wine
While wine can be made from many types of fruits and flowers, it is iconically produced from fermented grapes. Wine production dates back at least 8000 years, and today it is produced in quantity in more than 70 countries, with Italy, Spain, France, and the United States the largest producers of wine today. The world of wine is vast and complex, with more than 10,000 grape varietals in existence. This is largely due to experimental cross-breeding and grafting that has taken place for millennia, and such experiments have led to some of today’s most popular grape varieties, including Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. The primary styles of wine today include red, white, and rose. While almost all grape juice itself is white, red wine is made by allowing the juice from black (aka red) grapes to ferment in contact with its skins, while white wine is usually (but not always) made from white grapes. Rose wine is made from black grapes with limited skin contact, which provides the pinkish color.
Top Wine Posts:
Understanding the Wines of France
Wine and Beer Touring in California’s Paso Robles, 2017
Touring and Wine Tasting in California’s Anderson Valley
Harvest in Chile’s Casablanca Valley – A Dusty Paradise
Chateau Montelena’s Dream Tasting: A Retrospective of Five Decades of Wine
Exploring Port Wine: Touring Porto and the Douro Valley
Visiting Tuscany’s Tenuta dell’Ornellaia
There is a version of celebrity wine, and celebrity anything really, existing purely as a licensing deal: a label slapped onto something bulk-produced and mildly unremarkable. It is the vineyard equivalent of a perfume “partnership”, with the celebrity’s name performing the heavy marketing lift while the liquid inside does as little as possible. You, savvy…
Scharffenberger is a Mendocino-based winery that specializes exclusively in sparkling wines (all ideal for pairing with sister operation Scharffen Berger chocolates). We’ve covered these wines periodically through the years. Today we take a fresh look at the two flagship nonvintage bottlings as well as a vintage blanc de noirs picked in 2019. NV Scharffenberger Brut…
Rodney Strong is one of the old guard reliable producers of Sonoma, California, with a winery that dates back to 1959. Today it continues to crank out wines across a range of prices and styles, and today we take a look at a recent release (though not the most recent release, which is vintage 2021)…
La Biblioteca is an Oregon winery but its winemaker hails from Burgundy. Francois Millet, the legendary winemaker who ran Domaine Comte Georges de Vogue in Chambolle-Musigny for decades, took the winemaking reins here in 2022 as a consultant. The new 2023 vintage is the first with his imprint. Over Zoom from his offices in France,…
Papapietro Perry isn’t just a winery whose name is really fun to say out loud. It also makes some stellar wines from its home base in Sonoma County, California. We recently received two pinot noirs from its 2022 vintage. Let’s taste. Updated 5/2026 with coverage of the Peters Vineyard selection. 2022 Papapietro Perry Pinot Noir…
The Hilt Estate can be found in California’s Santa Rita Hills, where it creates a range of wines including Riesling, Syrah, and its flagship releases of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, under the guidance of winemaker Matt Dees. Today we look at The Hilt’s estate-grown Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, both from the standout 2023 vintage. 2023…
Alto Adige occupies one a curious corner of Italian wine. Tucked into Italy’s far north against the Austrian border, it carries a distinctly dual identity, shaped by Italian and Germanic influence in language, culture, and winemaking. Alpine peaks dominate the landscape, but the vineyards benefit from a surprisingly varied climate, with daytime sun and warm…
Chile’s Miguel Torres is the brand behind Serena Mode, a new non-alcoholic brand made from real varietal fruit — listed on the label — and vintage-dated. Two dealcoholized expressions are currently available. Let’s give them a try. 2024 Serena Mode 0.0 Sauvignon Blanc – A big, juicy, golden grape juice experience, this is a fairly…
The Baldacci family has established itself as a perennial favorite on the site, often making post-review encore appearances on our curated roundups of top 10 wines. Their familiarity is not without solid justification: nearly three decades into the winery’s run, the story is less about chasing notoriety than building something of high-quality reliability: something to…
Epoch is a Paso Robles wine producer with serious charitable goals, in fact it has a wine that’s completely dedicated to them. The Gratitude program is a collaborative project that has generated over $43,000 for charitable causes across three vintages so far, including support for victims of the LA wildfires and the central Texas floods.…