In Santa Barbara County, Doug Margerum is nearly legendary. His wine shop and restaurant, Wine Cask, was ground zero for the emerging Santa Barbara County wine culture. But all that is now gone.
As July ends, the annual pace of trade tastings begins to pick up again, as wine distributors take to the road with a few wine makers in tow, scheduling tastings for the wine trade in most larger cities.
Most aficionados of Italian wine are familiar with the offerings of Tuscany and Piedmont. Not as many know the excellent wines - and food - produced in Friuli and the Veneto.
New rules governing organic wine labeling in the U.S. took effect last month. The rule changes were intended to "clarify" the contents of organic labels for consumers. Clarify? Let's see ...
Cava is Spains answer to Frances famous bubbly - at a fraction of the price.
Neil Duarte shares a generations-old family recipe for Sicilian artichokes, one of his wife's signature dishes.
Roussanne - whose name may remind you as much of a French philosopher as a wine grape - rates high among favorite white-wine varieties for me.
Tom Hyland reports that happily, 2004 was a great vintage for Brunello di Montalcino.
If you join me in the quest for the wine roads less traveled, I think you'll enjoy this month's feature - Offbeat Whites - in Wine Focus in our WineLovers Discussion Groups.
Rosés are made just like their red siblings, just with less pigmentation from the skins ... It's a refreshing summertime quaffer, since you serve these chilled.
Question for thrifty wine lovers: Can we find value in a niche where the critics and points-chasers focus on the three-figure bottles while much of the cheap stuff is plonk?
If you're dining out and thinking about ordering a glass of "Meh-reh-TAHJ," please think twice. In its original intent, this new word was not intended to be pronounced as if it were French. But hardly anybody ever says it that way any more.
Wine owns a special place in the world of food and drink because it's one of the few consumables that we enjoy not only with our senses but with our mind.
Now get ready for the next big thing: In an age of environmental concerns and rising fuel costs, the glass wine bottle is coming under critical scrutiny.
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