Harvey Finkel

When I first became acquainted with the wines of Shafer Vineyards and met John Shafer – it must have been more than 25 years ago – two impressions engraved themselves on my mind: all the wines tasted so good right from the first; the charm and intelligence of John Shafer.... Read More

Rick Sayre, the eloquent director of winemaking at Rodney Strong Vineyards of Sonoma, presided recently at one of the dinners of the Boston Harbor Hotel’s Boston Wine Festival, giving me a chance to catch up on the wines and on the estimable Daniel Bruce’s kitchen handiwork. Rodney Strong, the eponymous... Read More

Nowhere else in Boston was suitable to meet head winemaker Georgetta Dane for a luncheon-tasting of her Big House Wines than the Liberty Hotel, a brilliant recasting of the notorious and historic Charles Street Jail which contains a bar called Alibi and an eatery known as Clink. I can attest... Read More

Eating and drinking the products of one’s own region is an emerging and burgeoning movement across the country. It is also a healthy notion, for knowing the source of what we consume must lead to more intelligent, tasty and wholesome purchasing by consumers and the production of higher quality products.... Read More

The scientific process is the opposite of dogma. Continual reexamination and correction are expected, desired. Restudying questions by other hands often refines, improves precision, but seldom leads to upheaval of what are accepted as basic general truths. We shall herein consider three recent examples of medical science corrigenda. They might... Read More

Dalton hardly seems a likely name for an Israeli winery, but, accent on the second syllable, it is the place – Ramat (“heights”) Dalton – where lies the winery in the mountainous Upper Galilee near the Lebanese border. It is a respected member of the new wave, the Israeli wine... Read More

Sardinians, according to Nicolas Belfrage, refer to mainland Italy as the “continente”, and regard wines sold there as exports. In some ways, Sardinia (Sardegna in Italian) has more in common with Corsica, the French outlier just to its north, than with the rest of Italy. This second-largest of Mediterranean islands... Read More

People picture science differently. For some, it’s a Gothic laboratory and Victor Frankenstein shrieking, “It’s alive!” For others, it’s a quiet and understated, sterile, well-lighted, modern and nondescript workplace. For still others, science is epidemiology, the statistical study of what affects the health of populations. What science really is amounts... Read More

Like bottles of wine, even in the same case, people age differently. Time may amplify what were once insignificant defects. There is, however, now a large and increasing number of very fit, healthy and active people well beyond the age of 6O. An elderly person who drinks, say, wine in... Read More