Whether you take more than a few days to polish off a bottle of wine, or you have one really special bottle that you and a loved one want to save forever, there’s never been an effective at-home wine preservation system until the Coravin appeared on the market. This gadget allows you to pour wine from a bottle without removing the cork, which means that oxygen never gets inside the bottle, thus preserving the wine as if it has never been touched. The Coravin Wine Preservation Opener uses a hollowed needle, which is inserted through the cork and fills the bottle with argon gas to pressurize ..read more

Pairing cheese with wine. Winemaking and cheesemaking have been established, side-by-side, for centuries, so it’s no surprise that this food and drink combination go so well together. Both often take years of aging to reach maturation and optimum flavor, both require careful tending by producers, and both are often created in similar terroir, or growing area. Still, wine and cheese have a yin and yang kind of relationship. Cheese is fatty. Wine is sharp. Yet these opposites attract to create a magical coupling of flavor and texture. It seems that scientists have discovered why these two are ..read more

Biodynamic wine is made with a set of farming practices that views the farm or vineyard as one solid organism. The ecosystem functions, with each portion of the farm or vineyard contributing to the next. The idea is to create a self-sustaining system. The wine grower uses natural materials, soils, and composts to sustain the vineyard. This approach to farming prohibits chemical fertilizers and pesticides for the sake of soil fertility. A range of animals from ducks to horses to sheep live on the soil and fertilize it, creating a rich, fertile environment for the vines to grow in. Biodynami ..read more

Many popular varieties of wine grapes have the word “Pinot” in their name, including Pinot Noir, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Blanc, and Pinot Meunier. Are these grapes connected somehow? Understanding the relationship between these grapes will enhance your knowledge, appreciation, and enjoyment of all the Pinots you drink. First of all, they share part of their name, Pinot, which means resembling a pinecone. The varietals were given this name due to the way the grapes grow in pinecone-shaped clusters. The latter of their names refers to the color of the grapes. Pinot is mentioned in the historical ..read more

Should you judge a wine by its closure? Cultural preconceptions aside, the stopper can tell a great deal about the wine it encloses. It can hint at longevity, quality, culture and history. Cork The world’s most widely used wine closure has been around for a while. Evidence of its usage dates back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. However, the close-fitting stopper we’re familiar with wasn’t popularized until the 18th century. Pro's Renewable resource. Cork is derived from the bark of Quercus suber, also known as the cork oak tree. These evergreens, the majority of which g ..read more

The 2020 wine harvest looks pretty different in many places around the world mostly due to climate change which caused scorching heat and deadly wildfires in California’s Napa and Sonoma, drought and heat waves in France, and thunderstorms and tornadoes in Italy. In addition, worry over the global economic problems means that the 2020 harvest is shaping up to be one of the most troublesome in memory. Covid-19 closed tasting rooms and restaurants. The 25% tariffs the U.S. imposed on English, French, Spanish, and German wines caused exports to drop dramatically, and the tariffs will remain in ..read more

Chardonnay is the world’s most popular and important grape for producing white wine, as well as Champagne, sparkling wine and dessert wine. Chardonnay is also the 5th most widely planted grape variety in the world. Recent DNA research conducted at UC Davis concluded Chardonnay is native to Burgundy, France and is the result of a cross between Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc and Gouais Blanc. Experts are not sure when or where the crossbreeding took place. It probably happened centuries ago. It is likely that the Romans planted Gouais Blanc on French soils in areas where Pinot Noir was planted as we ..read more

Is one of your New Year’s resolutions to get your house in order? Does this involve cleaning, organizing and generally taking stock of your ‘stuff’? Well, then it’s a great time to do an ‘inventory’ on your wine ‘cellar’ (even if it is fairly small in number). Take an inventory Make a list of your wine using any method that works for you:  pencil/paper, spreadsheet, or cellar tracker software www.cellartracker.com/ Arrange your bottles and list by: Country of Origin Wine Region within Country Grape Variety Vintage (year on the wine label) Store your wine correctly To get the ..read more

Wine can make a brilliant gift for the right people during the holidays, but which ones (the people and the wines)? How do you know what they like? And what would make it a personal gift? When you’re staring at rows and rows of wine at the store, you can start to feel a little lost. How do you know which bottle is the right bottle?  Who are great candidates for a wine gift? Anyone who considers themselves ‘foodies’ Anyone who hosts often Anyone who loves to cook (give them a bottle they can drink AND cook with) Travelers Deciding what kind of wine would be perfect for each pers ..read more

The holidays are a time for celebration. For many, these celebrations wouldn’t be the same without glasses of Champagne,  But which Champagnes should we reach for when bottles of bubbly abound? Champagne Region Sparkling wine can only be identified as “Champagne” when it comes from the Champagne wine region in the northeast of France and is made according to strict Methode Champenoise (secondary fermentation and lees aging within the bottle). Wine has been produced in the Champagne region since 496 A.D. by monks in monasteries,  used in the consecration of the first k ..read more