Tag: wine

The Myth of the Perfect Thanksgiving Wine

Almost any wine, red, white, rosé, or even sparkling, will be fine with all the myriad flavors extant on the traditional Thanksgiving table—but there’s one huge proviso: as long as you don’t expect the wine to work with the food. That’s because no single wine will. For decades, I’ve written columns on “what wine goes…


Musings on Merlot

I like many red wines that use merlot as their sole or dominant grape, especially when the merlot is grown in a cooler climate and has some of its natural varietal aroma characteristics. That is a little less likely these days with so many acres of the grape being planted in warmer regions, where its…


Luxembourg’s Surprising Wines

Wine in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is hardly new. In fact, viticulture dates back more than 2,000 years to the Romans, who planted the first vines on the steep slopes of the Moselle River that today forms the country’s border with Germany. The tradition and sense of place one finds here are equal with…


Winemakers Age Bottles of Red Below Adriatic Sea for 700 Days for ‘Flavor of the Ocean’

A Croatian winemaking duo have garnered global fame for their signature winemaking technique—aging grape bottles 20 meters below the surface of the Adriatic for 700 days, where in darkness and silence, the liquor absorbs accents of the sea. Now, they’re inviting customers to experience this undersea wine cellar, diving for their own bottle. Ivo Šegović, 38, and Edi…


The New Rules of Wine

The conventional wisdom that has pervaded the wine-loving community for the past several decades could very well be updated by newer rules that make more sense. But for reasons that are unclear to me, the new rules have never been widely disseminated. One of those old “rules,” in which we talk about serving white wines…


Wine Waiters: Tales and Tips

As we resume dining out, a few things might have changed during the pandemic shutdowns, and one of them is wine service. When people who are skilled in serving wine in restaurants are laid off for 18 months, many end up taking positions in other fields, leaving some restaurants with inexperienced servers. Experienced wine servers…


Tasting Room Tips: What to Know Before You Go

As the pandemic and wildfires subside in California, tasting rooms begin to host more people indoors than they did during the last 20 months or so. Those seeking to visit wineries in northern California and elsewhere are eager to resume fond experiences of the past. And tasting room reopenings are planned just about everywhere these…


The Case for Lower-Alcohol Red Wines

Look at the label on any bottle of wine, and you’ll see how much alcohol it has. Except for some very rare examples, the law requires it. I prefer wines with 13 percent or so. They appear to me to be better balanced. They work better with food and don’t intoxicate as fast. But most…


Explaining Bottle Variation

If you pay strict attention to the wines you buy, you may notice that there often are slight differences between two bottles of the “same” wine. This phenomenon is called “bottle variation.” Wine makers know it’s a hard-to-avoid pitfall. In particular, with wines made in the millions of cases, variations can be great. A 10,000-gallon…


Wine and Grilled Food

End-of-summer patio parties call for tossing steaks onto coals. And choosing the right wines for such fare seems simple enough—dark reds to go with grilled meats. But no one eats just steak at these parties. Patio shindigs start with chips and dips, nuts, crackers, cheese, and olives, plus finger food (bruschetta, lahvosh sandwiches), dips (hummus,…