Year

In the minds of most enthusiasts, Médoc is the cradle of Bordeaux. After all, this important region on the Left Bank of the Gironde River is home to four of the great châteaux that received First Growth rankings in the definitive 1855 classification: Château Lafite-Rothschild, Château Latour, Château Margaux, and Château Mouton Rothschild. Its prominence […]

Although Calistoga is home to what is perhaps Napa Valley’s most fabled and historic vineyard, the region was only very recently approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau as an American Viticultural Area, or AVA. First planted with Riesling and Zinfandel in the 1880s, the Eisele Vineyard is one of the rockiest […]

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 […]

‘‘My wife’s brother died in California, leaving quite an estate,’’ reads an 1879 letter from Stalham Wing in Napa Valley to a friend in Ohio. His family sent him out to settle affairs, he explains in the note, but legal challenges ensued, and by the time the matter was resolved, little property was left. He […]

Rich, extracted, full of fresh acidity, and rife with wild-honey, spice, and ginger notes, the Raats Family 2009 Chenin Blanc is powerful, elegant, and uniquely South African. Part of what makes Raats Chenin Blanc such a seducer is the lushness of grapes from 50- and 60-year-old untrellised bush vines, which produce lower yields and more […]

Véronique Drouhin knew she had discovered a special place when, in July 1987, she first crested the remote Oregon hillside that would become home to one of the most respected vineyards in the New World. Dropping gently away to the southeast, the idyllic slope before her offered breathtaking views across the Willamette Valley toward the […]