Featured Articles

The collective consciousness of connoisseurs took cognizance of Chilean wines only a few years ago, attention captured by emerging quality and, in the face of exponential increases elsewhere in the world, reasonable prices. Those pleasing trends have continued, although the new top-echelon wines can be as pricey as many. Wine... Read More

Discerning wine consumers are curious and hungry for information that often goes beyond what is in the glass, where it came from and how it was made. They are interested in wines from new places, want updates about the new faces at their favorite vineyards, and are eager to learn... Read More

Last summer I wrote about going to the Society of Wine Educators Conference and getting my wine geek on. This year the conference was in Monterey, which is a part of California wine country that I had not yet visited yet, so I was looking forward to this trip for... Read More

American craft brewers may boast about their innovative ways: bourbon barrel-aged beers, wild ingredients, beers that tip the ABV scale well north of 15%. Belgian brewers have been doing wild stuff for years. Not that “wild” is always the same as “good”, just as has been shown with the American... Read More

Harpoon’s head brewer, Al Marzi, had a session recently. “I was just over in England for a wedding and had some great cask ales. My wife was drinking a 3.8% bitter, I had a 4.5% ale, and they tasted great. That’s session. If you’re going to sit down in a... Read More

While domestic gin sales remain mostly flat to sinking, many consumers and savvy bartenders appear to be rediscovering the imported premium gin segment. The annual growth rate in sales of all imported gins reached two to three percent in 2OO6 (some estimate even four percent), a rate that has remained... Read More

The life-span extending effects of red wine’s resveratrol are being followed up the evolutionary scale by David A. Sinclair’s research group, which now reports positive results in a mammal, the mouse (published in nature November 2OO6). Recall* that prolongation of life had been demonstrated previously in resveratrol-treated yeast, roundworm, fruitfly,... Read More

Buying wine in the United States used to be a big deal, something almost ceremonial and definitely out of the ordinary. One of the major reasons that consumption’s reached a new height of popularity in the past decade is that we’ve finally overcome the idea of wine as a “special... Read More

Sideways, that infamous movie, did wonders for Southern California wine country and most notably, Pinot Noir. As a Sommelier I was trying for years to get some clients to try this wondrous grape, with some success. Then this movie comes out and top of the line drinkers of California Cabernet... Read More