An estimated 36 billion bottles of wine are produced around the world every year. With this much wine on the market, how do you choose just one wine worth collecting? Writer Heather Irwin says that you shouldn’t expect to collect the most prized bottles of wine in the world right away. Most collectors, even serious…
A few years ago, a Chowhound forum member shared a particular, but not uncommon, wine etiquette conundrum. She had invited a couple of friends over for dinner, but the wine they brought as a gift — a Mateus Rosé — was far too sweet for the steak dinner planned. Nonetheless, she thanked them for the…
You’ve heard of wine and food pairings, but have you ever heard of The Great Led Zeppelin Wine Pairing? A vintner, a musician, and a wine expert wanted to see what would happen if they tried to pair wines with the music of Led Zeppelin. What followed were six complete courses of wine, food, and…
If you’ve ever traveled to another state or another country, you’ll find that the wine prices vary dramatically. Living in a state like Oregon, you’ll be used to paying zero sales tax on wines, but when you take a trip down to California for the weekend, you might find that those same wine bottles cost…
The first time I moved my wine collection, I thought it would be a simple process. After all, I was only moving my collection from my apartment to my new home 20 minutes away in another state. What I didn’t realize until a week before my scheduled move was that, because I was moving to…
When wine writer Evan Dawson first started his wine collection, he says he was amazed by how many “bad wines” he owned. He would buy bottles of Carneros Pinot Noir or Amarone, and years later, wonder what he had been thinking. “I would like to travel back in time and ask myself what system I…
This spring, on April 26, the worst frost in 30 years hit Burgundy, wiping out potentially 30 percent or more of the budding grapes in the region. As temperatures dipped low, budding flowers were coated in a thick frost overnight, killing off the still-tender young sprouts. Damage estimates are still coming in, but so far,…
I grew up in a California winemaking family, and through this network, I got to know dozens of winemakers in Napa Valley and Sonoma. One of these social connections earned me a free weekend stay at a house on a beautiful California vineyard. Without this complex social web, I would have never had the opportunity…
Hannah R. Ruehlman had a problem; she needed to find a bottle of wine from 1952 as an anniversary gift for her husband, but she had no idea where to start. She turned to husband-and-wife wine writing team Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher for help. Fortunately for Ruehlman, John Brecher was in the same…
Wine investor Tom Gearing has seen his fair share of nervous wine collectors trying to get into investment-grade French wine for the first time. Collectors often feel as though they need to spend thousands of dollars on the top wine estates in France in order to get decent profits from their investments, but this isn’t…
The best wine critics in the world act as gatekeepers of the wine market. They have the power to sink a wine with a terrible review, or raise a wine up to legendary status. However, wine critics aren’t always consistent with their ratings; a study in the Journal of Wine Economics found that in blind…
Last summer, I was invited to a massive wine and dinner party that was attended by at least 50 guests. Since every couple brought along a bottle of wine, the two hosts scrambled to open dozens of bottles as the night wore on. About two hours into the party, one of the hosts needed to…
