The Rise of Celebrity Wine Brands
Putting their reputation on the wine
This is the Age of Wine. Should it be surprising that celebrities, like entrepreneurs everywhere, want to be part of it?
Into Wine
The Past, Present, and Future of the 100-Point Wine Rating System
Rating wine by quality.
The pleasure wine gives varies according to circumstances and mood, but many drinkers look for objective ratings when buying it. Reviewers all over the world rate wines out of 100 points, and many bottles carry stickers showing they scored 88, 90, or 93 points. But the 100-point system is not the only way wines are rated.
The Rich Diversity of Canada’s Top Wines
What an icon wine is and what it isn’t.
Many wineries, especially in New World regions, make what they call an icon wine. It is generally a limited-production red wine, the most expensive in a producer’s portfolio, and it sometimes comes in a bottle that’s heavier than the winery’s other bottles, as if to alert consumers to the wine’s gravitas.
The Many Styles of Canadian Pinot Noir
Pinor noir is known as the heartbreak grape, but when in the right hands, the rewards are fabulous, glass after glass.
In Canada, the main pinot noir regions are Niagara Peninsula and Prince Edward County in Ontario and Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, but there are plantings elsewhere in those provinces as well as in Nova Scotia and Quebec.
What Makes for Old Vine Wines?
Ambiguous but essential efforts to preserve vineyard heritage.
The conventional wisdom is that once vines pass a certain age—say, 20–30 years—they are better balanced with their environment and tend to produce fewer grapes but that these grapes make wines with distinctive flavour intensity and textural complexity.
Wine and Thanksgiving
Putting the vin in Thanksgiving.
So as you prepare a meal from this year’s harvest – whether of meat, fish, vegetables, grains, or fruit – complement it with an earlier year’s grape harvests.
The Diversity of Ontario Chardonnays
Anything but boring.
The debate about which grapes should be Ontario’s signature varieties has been going on for years.
Lambrusco: Italy’s Effervescent Red Wine
Taste the new generation.
Lambrusco, the sparkling wine from northeastern Italy, is in the midst of a major makeover, and it’s high time to taste it again.
The Lasting Inspiration of Iconic French Wines
New World homages.
French wines are now judged in the context of the scores of fine wines from around the world, but there is a residual belief that French wines are the benchmark against which wines should be judged.
