2009

Few properties in California’s Napa Valley boast as impressive a succession of winemaking alumni as Vineyard 29, which Teresa Norton and Tom Paine established in 1989 on 3 acres located just northwest of St. Helena. The couple had the good fortune to retain vineyard manager par excellence David Abreu to care for their investment; in […]

Serendipity played its part in the evolution of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. The first happy accident occurred in 1969, when founder Warren Winiarski met Nathan Fay, the first grower to plant Cabernet in what would later become the Stags Leap District. Winiarski was so impressed with Fay’s efforts that he bought a neighboring parcel; this […]

The Heidsieck name has been intimately associated with Champagne since 1785, when Florens-Louis Heidsieck established Heidsieck & Co. in Reims. Champagne Charles Heidsieck was founded in 1851 by its eponymous proprietor, a grandnephew of Florens-Louis, who earned the sobriquet “Champagne Charlie” while marketing his bubbly to the prosperous inhabitants of New York and Boston in […]

Water, barley, and yeast are not especially valuable ingredients; but, when combined at the Bowmore distillery, they can be transformed into something extraordinary. Such a miraculous metamorphosis took place in 1964, the year that the Islay distillery put into casks the handcrafted spirit that makes up the Trilogy, a sought-after limited edition that included three […]

One of the first wines of note to emerge from the now-bustling Paso Robles region on California’s Central Coast was a wine called Isosceles, a Pauillac-style blend of Cabernet Sau­vignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc from Justin Vineyards, founded by Justin Baldwin in 1981. Since that time, the region and this particular winery have gained renown […]

Mark Aubert’s career has been a peripatetic one. After succeeding celebrated winemaker Helen Turley at Peter Michael Winery, where for nine years he produced magnificent Chardonnays and ethereally beautiful Bordeaux-style reds, he later replaced his former mentor as winemaker at Colgin Cellars. He also reinforced his reputation as one of Napa Valley’s top talents with […]

In the early 1970s, when Denis Horgan acquired Leeuwin Estate, now one of Australia’s most important viticultural properties, there was not a vine in sight: It was a cattle ranch. Working with California vintner Robert Mondavi as their adviser, Horgan and his wife, Tricia, undertook the arduous task of transforming this parcel of land in […]

Though white wines of epic grace and beauty come from such regions as Alsace, the Rhône, Austria, Germany, California, and Oregon, nowhere does the Chardonnay grape develop the combination of sensuality and soulfulness that one finds in fruit from Burgundy’s Côte d’Or. Connoisseurs in particular associate the Côte de Beaune with white wines that merge […]

From the ages of ancient Sumeria and classical Greece to the present day, human beings have treated wine as everything from a religious totem to an art form. The mystic and romantic connotations we have attached to this beverage throughout history make it easy for us to forget that it is fundamentally an agricultural product—albeit […]