Harvey Finkel

Gone are the days when traditional kosher wine choice was limited to sweet Concords grown in New York State. Now we have available a wide array of wines of all varieties and styles. Beginning about 25 years ago, there has been a veritable revolution in the wine scene in Israel,... Read More

NICHOLEBIRDSALL, assistant winemaker at Bonterra Vineyards of Mendocino County in California, was part of the massive annual pilgrimage to the this year’s Boston Wine Expo, affording an opportunity to taste and discuss the wines she helps conceive and produce. Lovely wines and reasonably priced, they are worth sharing by means... Read More

Bill Hardy, scion of the eponymic family of the Hardy Wine Company, visited Massachusetts recently, bearing samples of Hardy’s way with Shiraz, the Australian term for Syrah. We’ll get into those specifics after consideration of the genre. Syrah is the great black grape of the northern Rhone, most notably Cote... Read More

Here is a wine full of flavor and elegance, intense, focused, long in both finish and life span, evoking fruits, flowers, even minerals, yet amazingly transparent and ethereally light. No other wine possesses this combination of qualities, no Riesling grown elsewhere either. Can we explain? Is it the slate-rich soil,... Read More

Spanish wines are on fire, and the hottest new restaurant in town is also Spanish. It’s true that wines from all over Spain are better than ever, but that reflects a gradual process. They are, subject to Euro-inflation, no longer so cheap as to engender guilt in the purchasing consumer.... Read More

First, let us revisit what is known of increased cancer risk associated with drinking. Alcohol (and its first breakdown product, acetaldehyde) is the only component of wine that may be inculpated, then almost exclusively when chronically abused. Spirits and beer appear to be associated with more risk than wine. It... Read More

Traditional kosher wine in the United States has been most often based upon Concord grapes grown in New York State, sweetened after fermentation (now often with less expensive corn syrup most of the year, but with cane sugar for Passover wines, because grains are not considered kosher for Passover by... Read More

When wines from California began to attract attention and gain a following in large east-coast markets 35 years ago, Concannon Vineyard was deemed worthy of respect. Tucked in the Livermore Valley, to the east of San Francisco Bay, alongside of Wente Brothers, it offered an alternative source to the better... Read More

Recent research has demonstrated that some of the polyphenols of wine appear to extend life span by mechanisms new to us. Maybe Ponce de Leon should have sought the fountain of youth in the vineyards of his native Spain instead of sloshing through the swamps of Florida. Be aware that,... Read More

Less chic, less compact, it sprawls over a much larger area of bewilderingly diverse terroirs, which, when properly fit with grape variety and growing methods, yield wines as fine as anywhere. Sonoma County, now with more than a dozen appellations, can offer cool sites suitable for sparkling wines and delicate... Read More