ShareAre you going to get the most mileage possible out of the wine you’ll be drinking this holiday season? I’m not talking about rationing your great aunt’s sherry. I’m talking about matching your wine with your food – which, if done right, makes both your beverage and your dinner taste better.
Problem is, the traditional Thanksgiving [...]

ShareWhen I enjoyed some selections from my cellar with my fellow board members at a private environmental/reproductive rights foundation last weekend, little did they know I was writing up their tasting notes. I’d chosen the wines to reflect Noyes’s funding priorities, which helped, because some board members are wine novices, so the foundation-related nicknames I [...]

ShareWine can be intimidating enough. There’s red, white, or pink; Old World or New, “first growth” or grand cru. So why did they have to go and name some of it gewürztraminer? I’ve already introduced you to that other wonderful white that suffers so in the recognition department, not because it tastes weird or unmemorable, [...]

ShareWhile preparing for a trip to Chile not too long ago — made possible by a companion airfare deal, the name of which turned out to be ironic — I fretted over how, exactly, to refer to my wife when we arrived in this exciting though deeply conservative country. (At the time, not even straight [...]

ShareIn the case of my tasting group the Ladies Tasting Society, our next chardonnay is usually, well, another chardonnay.
But for many wine drinkers, chardonnay is oh, so yesterday. A victim of its own success — Americans drink more of it than all red varieties combined — chardonnay has become too obvious a selection for wine [...]

ShareAlthough Wine Girl knows better, whenever she sees bubbles she says, “Champagne, please.” I use the C-word even though I’m aware that only a fraction of the fizzy wines we drink is really Champagne, that is, produced in the region of France called Champagne; blended from chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier; and protected by [...]

ShareIf geeks have invaded one aspect of wine appreciation, it is surely that of a wine’s aroma, or “nose.” You can tell because, now that so many authorities have weighed in on the subject, we can’t decide what to call it anymore. Some enophiles will save the term “aroma” for a wine’s more fruity smells, [...]