Just about every glorious adjective in the book has been spent in the name of describing 2007 vintage wines from the Southern Rhône. Robert Parker gave the wines his benediction when he wrote that it is “the greatest vintage I have tasted in my thirty years in that region.” More importantly, our own Chris Parker [...read more]

Here is a sweet-natured, fragant Rhône wine.  It is lighter than some and openly appealing.  It is organic.  It is a little floral — more field flower than scented garden.  The taste is lively with just enough stone and wood at the back of our mouth to remind us that this is no summer-time idler, [...read more]

For three centuries the great port wine houses which stand along the Douro River in northern Portugal  have shipped vintage port across the English-speaking world.   The region has always produced table wine as well from the same grapes — but these wines stayed at home.  This has changed — we can now find very good [...read more]

Where do wine and history connect?  The change of grapes into wine, year in and year out, stands apart from the tumult of great events.  Can we taste the hopes of a people in their wine?  If the intensity of struggle and identity appears in any wine, it must surely be in the wines of [...read more]

Terre d’Ardoise Carignan Vieilles Vignes 2007.  Pity the humble carignan grape.  Frequently blended, jugged, boxed, and overlooked.  As recently as 1998, it was the most widely planted variety in France and valued for the immense productivity of each hectare.   In the late 1990’s carignan was blamed for the over production of vin ordinaire — the [...read more]