Wine is such a mysterious beverage. Wine geeks will sniff it, quaff it, swizzle it, and then come up with all these wild descriptors: cassis, meadow, leather, mushroom. Where do all these elusive aromas and flavors come from? Partly from the grape, partly from aging in oak, (partly from our imaginations), and partly from tannin. Tannins are a group of chemicals that occur in the bark of many...

Hearty-healthy phenolics are the most touted benefits of wine, but another study, performed by biochemist Carlos Muller of California State University at Fresno, measured levels of salicylic acid in various California wines. Salicylic acid, which is also the active ingredient of aspirin ... ’s finding? Wine contains almost twice as much salicylic acid per liter as the daily recommended dose...

"Do your wines contain sulfites? My friend is very allergic and she'll go into shock if she drinks wine containing sulfites." That’s enough to scare me silly. All I need is to have a gasping, cyanotic customer on the floor. "Well, uh," I stammer, "then perhaps she'd better not have any, just in case." And I pull the glass back. He hangs on to the glass. "So your wines do have sulfites...

As you may recall, last month (was it only last month? It feels like a mythic time...) -- Last month we went to Le Fonti, Chianti, and tasted the delicious wines and olive oil of the Caciorgna-Bernini team. Along with...

In the voluminous amount of words that are dedicated to the conversation on wine both in print and on-line there is a tendency to focus on what's new, what's hot, what's cultish, what's fashionable. This makes sense. What's New...

I just finished reading in California Grapevine an address that Dan Berger gave the Wine Press Club of New South Wales. You can also find it online HERE. (ATTN: PDF) In it, he offers selected advice for the wineries...

IDEAL CONDITIONS WITH STYLE FOR PROPER WINE STORAGE... Premium wine cabinets create and maintain optimal wine storage conditions to preserve and age fine wines. Constructed from premium wood materials, wine cabinets create natural environments that are dark, cool, climate-controlled and free from outside disturbance. Premium wine cabinets have been engineered to recreate the climate found...

Man has been making wine for thousands of years. From the pages of the Old Testament to drawings found within the ruins of ancient Egypt , wine has been a part of life and culture. How wine is made ... . There are six basic steps to wine making. And while there are any numbers of optional steps, these six are at the core of transforming the juice of a cultivated grape into the wine we have enjoyed over those...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------TAKE THE WHY DID YOU BUY THAT WINE SURVEY. CLICK HERE-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I had a long heart to palate talk with myself this long weekend and came...

There was a fairly portentous song by Fastball, which came out in the 90s. It was called The Way, and it captures my mood -- my lazy, slacking, feckless, irresponsible mood -- as I've gone back to work and left...