Why Wine Is Unlike Any Other Drink: A Love Letter To Wine’s Wildness
Wine is unlike every other alcoholic drink in that it is labeled with a year and a place. While other alcoholic beverages attempt to replicate themselves identically from year to year – so that you know your 18 year old Glenlivet will be the same as the one you nipped from your grandmother’s liquor cabinet…
Organic Viticulture vs. Better Living Through Chemistry?
Crack is vegan. This is something I say a lot. What I mean is that just because something is vegan doesn’t mean that it’s healthy for you. You can live on french fries, Oreos, and crack and still be vegan. The same is true of the term “organic.” Organic just means that the substances used…
Que Syrah, Sirah?
In most grocery store wine sections (in the U.S.) you’ll usually find bottles of Syrah in the same vicinity of bottles of Petite Sirah. Unfortunately this is probably because the person who stocks those shelves doesn’t know very much about wine. Though it sounds the same, Petite Sirah is not a baby version of Syrah.…
Is Wine A Luxury Product?
“Dry January” strides virtuously and purposefully off the end of the calendar month into, we assume for some, wetter months ahead. Instead of partaking – oxymoronically – in abstinence, I used this arbitrary stretch of time – between Winter Solstice debauchery and the beginnings of late-winter cabin fever revelry (kicked off in the U.S. by…
The Evolving Science of Organic Viticulture
How we farm wine grapes constantly evolves as we learn to adapt to new knowledge, new climatic events, and new pest pressures. It’s not static. When we commit to organic viticulture, then, are we locking into only one option? Are we doing the same kind of viticulture year after year, despite annual variations and new…
