At the southern tip of Africa you will find one of the most breathtakingly beautiful wine regions in the world. Known locally as the Mother City, Cape Town is the gateway to the South African wine country and one of the great wine capitals of the world. Here the cultures of Africa, Europe and the [...]

From its source in the Cévennes Mountains, The Loire River flows through about 625 miles of green, peaceful countryside, ancient towns and magnificent châteaux before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. The Loire is the longest river in France, and the variations in soil, climate and grape varieties found along its banks are reflected in the wide [...]

Spanish wines are some of the most interesting and offer the best values found anywhere in the world today. The advances in international marketing have made available wines from Spanish growing areas unheard of 15 years ago. Some grape varieties are familiar – Garnacha (Grenache, a major grape of the French Rhone Valley), Monastrell (Mourvèdre, [...]

Italy is the world’s largest producer and consumer of wine. Vines carpet all twenty of its regions, from the snow-covered peaks of the Alto Adige to Apulia, the forgotten toe of Italy, even offshore to the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. The statistics are staggering: 4,000 years of winemaking history, 20 regions, 96 provinces, 1,000-plus [...]

Burgundy, one of the world’s most famous wine-growing areas, is located in eastern France, southeast of Paris. It consists of five major regions, beginning with the northernmost and flowing southward: Chablis, Côte d’Or, Côte Chalonnaise, Mâconnais and Beaujolais. The Côte d’Or is further divided into two well-known sections – Côte de Nuits in the North [...]

In 1933, when Prohibition was appealed and reversed, wineries were in sad shape, having been largely neglected for years. Many of the wines produced in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s had serious bacterial defects. The University of California at Davis accepted the challenge and played a major role in the regeneration to quality. The work [...]

It is easy to view the California wine business as a new and fast-paced industry that has arisen seemingly out of nowhere. We see an amazing proliferation of new wines and wineries, new winemakers and new technology – a virtual whirlwind of change. Although California wine today is indeed evolving at a brisk pace, its [...]

Bordeaux is deemed the most prestigious winegrowing region in the world and is considered the birthplace of wine culture, as we know it today. While steeped in tradition, Bordeaux has continually updated vineyard and winemaking practices in order to improve quality. Bordeaux is currently the leading producer of high quality red wines in the world [...]

Chardonnay remains the most popular white wine-by-name wherever wine is consumed. You can pay as little as $6 for a bottle of California cheapie or $600 for Le Montrachet, the pinnacle of white Burgundy – the region in France where the variety originated. I can’t recommend either of these extremes. Really cheap Chardonnay has no [...]