ShareIt was a perfect choice for a chilly January evening and a plateful of handmade hamburgers: zinfandel. Rich, round, and spicy, this varietal remains so popular because of its easy-to-drink, belly-warming, affordable profile. It’s not a wine to get too serious about; in fact, our least favorite zinfandel in a recent blind tasting held by [...]

ShareThe Ladies Tasting Society met the other night to do a blind tasting of zinfandel wines and it was the most fun we’d had since that poolside rosé taste-off in Palm Springs. Not just because of the sage and jalapeño burgers that paired so perfectly with the wines. Not just because of the debate that [...]

ShareFor those of you who’ve resolved to continue drinking bubbly beyond New Year’s, my tasting group has five special Champagnes we’d recommend. No need to print out our list and use it as a buying guide; as the Ladies Tasting Society blind-tasted our way through these wines, we were struck by how consistently delicious they [...]

ShareThere’s a cloak of mystery still surrounding wines from South Africa. Because the wine industry there is so young, most wine drinkers in the U.S. will draw a blank when asked about South African wine. In fact, when my tasting group, The Ladies Tasting Society, sat down last week to taste its way through eight [...]

ShareMalbec, the signature varietal of Argentina, isn’t a red wine that most people reach for as a rule. Its South American provenance has only been on fine wine drinkers’ radar for a couple of decades, and the vine itself — with its sensitivity to frost and disease, plus its tendency to make ham-handed, tannic wines [...]

ShareRiesling, the rich white native to Germany, is one of the most underappreciated wines of all time. There are two reasons for this: the common (and mistaken) impression that all riesling is sweet, and the indecipherable labeling on most Old World examples. Lucky for white wine lovers, a superhero has stepped forward to save this [...]

ShareI gained a friend at a party last weekend thanks to an embarrassingly nerdy discussion we had about, of all things, storage. (I promise I am not usually such a dweeb at parties, but I was standing around with a handful of Internet and high tech types.) My new friend was delving deep into the [...]

ShareIn a landscape of rolling, oak-dotted hills and vineyards producing loads of forgettable wine, one Sierra Foothills winery is determined to make its mark. It’s called Cedarville Vineyard and it’s run by “tech refugees” and UC Davis oenology graduates Jonathan Lachs and Susan Marks. (That’s me with Jonathan at their tasting room.) Cedarville’s acreage is [...]

ShareNormally the words “emerging wine region” should merit a wine lover’s attention. With demand (and prices) rising for well-known labels, emerging wine regions are often the source of easy-to-find, easy-on-your-wallet palate pleasers. Such is the case, for example, with South Africa or Languedoc-Roussillon in the south of France.
Unfortunately, the term can also refer to an [...]

ShareWhat if I told you that the best wine list I ever saw didn’t really exist?
No, it wasn’t in cyberspace or science fiction. It was at Fine’s Cellar, a smart restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona I visited not long after it opened last winter. Partly because the paint was just dry, but mostly because the owner [...]