Slideshows

A white wine with heart. Many wineries in California include the word family on their labels—a descriptor intended to suggest not only that the contents of the bottle are the result of a multigenerational labor of love but also that future generations will heed the call of the vine. In many instances, the families in […]

Those who contend that Chardonnay grown in the sacred precincts of Chablis and the Côte de Beaune makes the best white wine on the planet can certainly find plenty of liquid evidence to support their argument. The soils of Burgundy, after all, have nurtured white wines of renown since the age of Charlemagne. These campaigners, […]

For some, viticulture is a career of choice, while for others it is a calling. One suspects that Dick Erath falls into the latter category. After experimenting with making his own wine at home, Erath, an engineer by training, enrolled in courses at the University of California, Davis. Not long thereafter, he moved his family […]

The Haag family, which practices its craft in Germany’s Middle Mosel region, enjoys a reputation for producing white wines of the highest quality with astonishing consistency. Their dependability, however, is explained in part by the fact that they have worked this land for more than four centuries. The Fritz Haag 2011 Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel Mosel […]

Leslie Rudd’s quest for quality is steadfast. His roles as owner of Standard Beverage Corp., chairman of Dean and DeLuca, and owner of Rudd Oakville Estate in Napa Valley have attuned his eye to identifying excellence in all things. His rocky, red-soiled acreage at the foot of the Vaca Mountains in Oakville, for instance, is […]

An immodestly brilliant Pomerol… The first test of a truly great man is his humility,” asserted the English art critic and social theorist John Ruskin, whose contemporaries were unlikely to have accused him of possessing an undue measure of this virtue. Hardly a subject existed on which Ruskin did not hold an opinion that could […]

Founded in Napa valley in 1862 by the German immigrant Jacob Schram near the town of Calistoga, Schramsberg was an early benchmark of quality in the region and even figured in the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson, who mentions the winery in his accounts of his journey to California. About 30 years after Prohibition, the […]

When most wine collectors think of Australia, they think of Penfolds; and when they ponder Penfolds, their thoughts ineluctably drift toward Grange, the label’s flagship wine, which emphasizes Shiraz and was first produced commercially in 1952. Like Grange, Bin 707—which debuted with the 1964 vintage—is sourced from multiple vineyards in multiple regions that include Adelaide […]

Tucked among the hills of Santa Barbara County’s Santa Ynez Valley is a 600-acre laboratory where fascinating oenological experiments are carried out by Matt Dees. An alumnus of the University of Vermont and a veteran of the very different growing conditions of New Zealand and Napa Valley, Dees now presides over the complex winemaking at […]