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Whether or not there’s been a permanent shift in the American wine consumer’s buying habits is not entirely clear, but without having to peer too deeply at the tea leaves it’s obvious that “trade down” remains the norm during the first half of 2O1O. Just as has been the case... Read More

Chile is still figuring out its complex slopes, valleys, and microclimates, and still doing it right at enticing prices. I was introduced to still another Chilean brand, MontGras Properties, when its head winemaker, Santiago Margozzini, visited recently. I came away very glad to have met him and his wines.MontGras was... Read More

So says the mainstream media, the economic analysts, the industry analysts; for a change, even the raw numbers bear them out. Overall US beer sales were down 2.2% in 2OO9, and it’s not getting better in 2O1O; the Beer Institute says sales in the first five months are down 4%,... Read More

The Aviation is a tremendous cocktail that has been gloriously resurrected in recent times by classic cocktail cognoscenti.  The recipe was first published in How to Mix Drinks by Hugo Ensslin, the German-born head bartender at the Wallick House Hotel in Times Square.  His was the last cocktail manual to... Read More

Whether you’re talking politics, literature, culinary icons, or movies, there’s always a place for gin in the conversation.  After all, Winston Churchill, FDR, Julia Child, and Jack London are among its most famous fans, to name but a few.  With all the hullaballoo around vodka throughout the last decade-plus, gin... Read More

About 25 years ago I was going through something of an epiphany regarding wine’s influences upon health. At the time there were two committed camps in the US. A sizable number insisted that anything containing alcohol was intrinsically evil, prohibitionists denying that any good could ever come from drinking, however... Read More

If Ballard Canyon in California’s Santa Barbara County is as unknown to most wine professionals as it had been to me prior to a recent trip to the region, my prediction is that it will soon be “discovered”. The pending AVA is a source of superb Syrah. Not that Rhône... Read More

Few indeed are sources of world-class Pinot Noir. Let us count them. The gold standard resides in the Côte d’Or and, to a lesser degree, the Côte Chalonnaise. I’ve drunk two or three exemplars in the Alto Adige, Italy’s most northerly reaches. Over here, we have Oregon’s Willamette Valley and... Read More

In a small industrial park near downtown Tampa, a buzz continues to grow louder, emanating from the stainless steel tanks of a tiny Florida brewery. The hype about Cigar City Brewing started long before it even brewed its first batch. Run by a beer columnist for a local Tampa newspaper,... Read More