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Aging Gracefully

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...
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Craft Brewing ’08

Fast on the heels of another highly successful year, the American craft beer industry is gearing up for another profitable one and the challenges that accompany success. As the segment continues its development from a tiny niche to a legitimate force in the beverage alcohol marketplace, craft brewers are increasingly...
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Profile: Bill Samuels

BILL SAMUELS, Jr. • 67 • President & CEO • Maker’s Mark Distillery • Loretto, Kentucky Tall and rangy Bill Samuels is steeped in family history, local culture, yarns, jim-crack anti-promotion, all driven by a deep love of the taste of his family’s 5O-year tradition of making fine bourbon. Samuels...
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Profile: Nicolas Joly

NICOLAS JOLY • Winemaker-Viticulturalist-Educator • Savennières, Loire, France The Loire Valley, arguably France’s most exciting wine region, produces underrated and undervalued wines and is home to oenological rebels who thrive on experimenting and evolving techniques, and who regularly and convincingly break France’s iron rules of viticulture and winemaking. Though the...
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Tasting: Do it like the pros.

Well isn’t this overwhelming? Deliciously so, but where in the Expo do we begin in this sea of wine? As tempting as it is to just jump in and taste I would strongly recommend forming a plan before you wade in. That plan should consist first of knowing how to...
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Annual Book Review

THERE HAS to be SUBSTANCE and spirit in a book to occupy real estate in my library. A good example of a book that delivers on substance is Jamie Goode’s The Science of Wine. Explaining the scientific basis underlying wine tasting, viticulture and vinification is necessary for those of us...
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Revisiting South America’s Wines

Though value wines, under $1O a bottle, remain the essential hook for the US consumer, there are wines costing $5O or more, such as Almaviva, Clos Apalta and Lota from Chile and Caro from Argentina, as well at all price points between. What has changed? Why do Americans love these...
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Cal’s Zins

This is the big red that you can open up and drink without having to worry about whether it’s “ready” or not. It provides direct sensual pleasure that is usually not cloaked behind barricades of tannin. And it’s not for everyone. The potent, sometimes dizzying alcohol levels tend to put...
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Packaging, thinking outside the bottle

Three-liter boxes have been used for packaging good quality wines in Europe, Australia and elsewhere for many years, and consumers there rarely attach a stigma of cheap, unpalatable wine to such packages. These contain the equivalent of four 75Oml bottles and are popular with consumers who want wine on their...
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