Classic Wines

The night started well – endless glasses of Bouvet Brut sparkling wine for from Loire; lush gardens of plants, flowers, and trees lining elegant white tables and chairs; a ballroom full of wine bottles begging to be poured. There were reds and w... read more

Once a month, I get together with a small group of local wine professionals for dinner and a good old fashioned cellar-purging. And while the wines that clutter the table by meal’s end are never anything short of staggering, having the chance to ... read more

Ask any connoisseur where the world’s greatest wines are produced and you’re likely to hear the same regions you would have ten or twenty years ago: Burgundy, Bordeaux, Napa—the usual suspects. But in recent years, the wines of P... read more

Welcome to the Platinum Series of the Gold Medal Wine Club. This is a special New Years Edition that we’ve put out so you can enjoy some great new wines with your New Year. We conducted a tasting of the featured wines inside this months’ shipment and a... read more

New Years is a time to raise a glass, make a resolution, and enjoy the company of those around you. Only a few short days remain…are you prepared to ring in the new?First and foremost, we have to discuss Champagne. The staple of your New Years n... read more

The decorations are hung…the food is prepared…the guests are arriving...now the only thing left to do is...doh! There's always something that slips by unnoticed until it's too late. In this hectic holiday season, it can be very easy to forget some comm... read more

All over the U.S. people are gearing up for holiday celebrations. Whether planning a meal for 4 people or 40, one question inevitably comes up: “what wines should I serve this year?”When it comes to food and wine pairings, holiday dinners can be consid... read more

One of the biggest misconceptions about wine lovers is that they prefer complex, so-called serious wines at the expense of all others. That those who have the most well-stocked cellars or access to the rarest old wines will open up those bottles whenev... read more

Ask any connoisseur where the world's greatest wines are produced and you're likely to hear the same regions you would have ten or twenty years ago: Burgundy, Bordeaux, Napa - the usual suspects.But in recent years, the wines of Piedmont have made a de... read more

Grab Your Wallet and Head For That Sparkling White Isle. New Year's Is Here, and That Means It's Champagne Season.New Year's. I don't know about you, but practically my entire group of friends has silver shoes buffed and waiting by the door to usher ou... read more

This wine exhibits all the inky color and concentration you'd expect from a Rosenblum Petite Sirah, though at 14.4% alcohol, it's lower-octane than a number of their other bottlings of this varietal. (The 2004 Mendocino County Eagle Point Vineyard, for... read more

Buying wine for other people has never been an easy trick. It has to do with all the lifestyle associations that are inevitably heaped onto that poor, unsuspecting bottle. Indeed - and inexplicably - the kind of fermented grape juice you choose to drin... read more

Veuve Clicquot, one of the grandest, most highly respected Champagne houses in a region with no shortage of venerable producers, is about to change the way you look at vintage bubbly.In honor of the new Vertical Limit cellar created by Porsche Design i... read more

There are some producers whose reputations so far exceed nearly everyone else's that you can almost justify spending any amount of money on one or two of their precious bottles. We all know their names�Petrus, Latour, Screaming Eagle�and in wine circle... read more

The amount of money wine lovers are willing to spend on a bottle seems, these days, to be creeping inexorably northward. Whatever has caused this—wine’s increasing popularity in this country, the incessant drumbeat of glowing reviews and ar... read more

If I had any question that summer was over before this week, the current state of my wine cellar drove it home: For the first time since this spring, there is no more rosé to enjoy.There are whites, sure, and even a bottle of Vinho Verde. But of... read more

At a wonderful new wine bar and restaurant outside Philadelphia earlier this week, as I was asking the sommelier what I should pair with half a roasted chicken, I realized something. Or, to be more accurate, the sommelier made a point that I’ve b... read more

Now that Labor Day is almost here, I find myself looking at my calendar for the next several months, trying to squeeze in as many wine dinners as possible. And as summer rolls into fall, there are certainly no shortage of them to choose from. I’v... read more

The issue of global warming may be an academic one for the pundits and politicians in Washington, pontificating and preening in their air-conditioned studios and offices. But for wine lovers, it’s starting to hit a bit closer to home, and its imp... read more

There’s a bit of a wine revolution going on these days, and nowhere is this more apparent than with the wines restaurants are serving by the glass. Of course, this is not a revolution without its share of problems: As I noted earlier this week in... read more