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If Ballard Canyon in California’s Santa Barbara County is as unknown to most wine professionals as it had been to me prior to a recent trip to the region, my prediction is that it will soon be “discovered”. The pending AVA is a source of superb Syrah. Not that Rhône... Read More

Few indeed are sources of world-class Pinot Noir. Let us count them. The gold standard resides in the Côte d’Or and, to a lesser degree, the Côte Chalonnaise. I’ve drunk two or three exemplars in the Alto Adige, Italy’s most northerly reaches. Over here, we have Oregon’s Willamette Valley and... Read More

In a small industrial park near downtown Tampa, a buzz continues to grow louder, emanating from the stainless steel tanks of a tiny Florida brewery. The hype about Cigar City Brewing started long before it even brewed its first batch. Run by a beer columnist for a local Tampa newspaper,... Read More

Florodora, a musical revue from London, hit it big on Broadway in 19OO.  It was one of the first successful Broadway musicals of the 2Oth century, showing for 552 performances on the New York stage before touring extensively around the world.  If the name didn’t already cue you, the musical... Read More

If you read the end of the year reports for any major beer producer, the song remains the same: 2OO9 was a challenging and complicated year in the beer industry, stemming from a depressed economic environment, tightening credit markets and continuing cost pressures.  Overall, beer sales in the United States... Read More

I’m a big fan of draft beer in the summer. The advantages are clear: less handling, usually less expensive, more environmentally friendly, and as lots of folks will tell you, it’s usually how brewers meant the beer to be poured. I like having draft at all our family gatherings: it... Read More

Alongside a swinging door to the kitchen, sacks of malt are stacked up on pallets. Collectively, the piles could easily serve as a retaining wall, of sorts, if it weren’t for one thing: bag by bag, the heap will quickly be depleted within the week, leaving an empty space where... Read More

In the spring of 2O1O, I attended four events, Sicilia en Primeur and Le Contrade dell’Etna, both in Sicily, and Vinitaly and VinoVinoVino 2O1O, both in the Veneto. During these visits, I came to understand some of the current issues challenging Sicilian wine producers. These are the likely emergence of... Read More

“O where hae ye been, Lord Randall, my boon?O where hae ye been; so wan hae ye groon?”“I’ve been to yon vineyard; mother make my bed soon,For I’m weary o’ pinot, and fain would lie doon.” “I’ll plant the mourvèdre, and will dolcetto proon,And I’ll pick them both by the... Read More