Tasting Room
The Right Way To Blind Taste Wine | Mark As Read |
First of all, let's identify the wrong way to blind-taste wine. The wrong way involves taking a sip of some mystery wine, swirling it around in your mouth in a disdainful way, and then saying something like, "Well, Bonneau, of course. The Cel...
The No-Napa Guide to California Cabernet | Mark As Read |
Everyone knows Napa Valley makes great Cabernet Sauvignon. But now exciting cabs are arriving from the “other” California, like Santa Barbara’s Happy Canyon region and Lake County’s obsidian-strewn hills. Here, a guide to t...
This Is What Happens When Ray Isle Talks to a Chef | Mark As Read |
At the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen last year, I sat down for a few minutes one afternoon to chat with my fellow Houstonian Chris Shepherd, the insanely talented cook and owner of Houston's acclaimed Underbelly restaurant and&nb...
Sherry: Not Just for Little Old Ladies Anymore | Mark As Read |
Here’s a multiple choice quiz. Sherry is: a) Sweet, cloying stuff from a screwtap-topped bottle sipped by bored grannies while watching “America’s Top Knitters.” b) Some sort of vaguely appealing, dry-tangy, not-exactly-win...
Is a Bottle of Harlan Estate Really Worth $750? | Mark As Read |
Recently I had the good fortune (apt phrase) to taste through several vintages of Harlan Estate red, which is one of the most sought-after, highly rated and, yes, expensive wines from Napa Valley. A red blend that primarily Cabernet Sauvignon, it ...
5 Great Scotches That Don't Cost $628,000 a Bottle | Mark As Read |
Thank you, Guinness. Not the beer—the Guinness Book of World Records folks, who have finally confirmed that yes, indeed, the 6-liter, Lalique-decanter-enclosed bottle of Macallan that sold last year for $628,000 is, witho...
5 White Lies about Chardonnay, Plus 25 Excellent Bottles to Try | Mark As Read |
No wine has ever been so unfairly maligned as Chardonnay. F&W’s Ray Isle debunks the myths and extols the magnificence of great bottlings at every price and in every style. Myth: All California Chardonnay Is Big & Buttery Once upon a...
Italy's Philosopher-Genius of Wine | Mark As Read |
Italy’s Josko Gravner is the only winemaker I’ve met who keeps a simple wooden chair in his cellar just so he can sit down there and think about his wine. Is he making it the right way? Should he have a different approach? Is it truly ...
5 Pink Sparkling Wines for Valentine's Day | Mark As Read |
There are many things you could drink for Valentine’s Day, depending on the nature of your relationship: a snazzy cocktail at a dark bar (hot date), a cold Bud in front of the TV (married for 40 years), milk (you’re 8 years old and liv...
Ray Isle's Ultimate Super Bowl Sunday Beverage Plan | Mark As Read |
Having people over? Planning to serve them something besides water? If you want them to actually stay for the game, that's an excellent idea. I headed over to the Today Show recently with some punch bowls and six-packs (literally) to share so...
Why Would Anyone Drink Old Prosecco? | Mark As Read |
Of all the wines in the world, the last one that most people would think might be improved by aging over time in a cellar is probably Prosecco (well, actually, Myx Fusions Moscato—the fruit-infused fizz that Nicki Minaj promotes—probab...
7 Top Sparkling Wines of 2014 | Mark As Read |
For everyone who has NOT bought their bubbles for New Year’s yet, take note: It is not too late! And to help out in that endeavor, here are my favorite Champagnes and sparkling wines from the last year of tasting. Any of them would make an e...
What the Heck Do Hobbits Drink, Anyway? | Mark As Read |
With the opening of the final chapter in the Hobbit trilogy of films, it seems natural to wonder what hobbits drink—I mean, when they aren’t haring off on adventures with roving troops of dwarves, crawling atop mounds of treasure guard...
9 of the Year's Best Red Wine Values | Mark As Read |
For holiday entertaining, buy your wines by the case—most stores offer a 10 percent or more discount. (And, unlike eggnog, say, bottles that you don’t get around to using for the holidays will still be good for months or potentially ye...
9 Great White Wine Values for the Holidays | Mark As Read |
When it comes to wine, the best plan for holiday entertaining is to buy it by the case. Wine stores typically offer a 10 percent discount—sometimes more—when you buy 12 bottles (some stores also allow you to mix and match, so you don&r...
7 of New Zealand's Best Sauvignon Blancs | Mark As Read |
A recent trip to New Zealand gave me to opportunity to attend the Air New Zealand Wine Awards. More than 1,300 wines are entered each year, making it easily the biggest wine competition in New Zealand (and likely the longest-lived—it’s...
Sommeliers' Top Pizza Wines for the Night Before Thanksgiving | Mark As Read |
Thanksgiving is racing towards us as fast as a ticked-off wild turkey (I should know: I’ve been attacked by one) which will mean innumerable blog posts about what wines go best with the classic roasted bird. But, what about the night be...
Spain's Greatest Cabernet | Mark As Read |
When people think of Spain's wines, they tend to think of crisp Albariños from Galicia, Tempranillo-driven reds from Rioja and Ribera del Duero, and powerful cuvees from the Priorat, where Grenache is the dominant grape. Cabernet Sauvignon,...
How Not to Get Ripped Off on a Restaurant Wine List | Mark As Read |
File this under “mistakes you do not want to make, ever.” According to a story broken by nj.com, recently a customer at Bobby Flay Steak at the Borgata in Atlantic City ordered what he thought was a $37.50 bottle of wine, only to find ...
The 7 Most Surprising Smells You Can Find in Wine | Mark As Read |
Describing what a wine tastes like with words is a little like trying to describe the ocean to someone who's never left the cornfields of Iowa, but these are the challenges we wine writers face. In his astoundingly beautiful new book, Th...
Why Do These Cities Hate Champagne? | Mark As Read |
Foursquare, the recently-rejiggered local search app, can provide a wealth of handy info—for instance, I recently asked the company’s data gurus what cities in the US mention Champagne the most when using the app. The results weren&rsq...
Why Drink Beaujolais Nouveau When you Could Drink These? | Mark As Read |
It’s mid-October, which means that soon it will be November, and that means that in a month or so we’re going to start seeing ads, again, just like every year, for Beaujolais Nouveau. And you know what? Don’t bother. Skip it. Bea...
5 Great Wines that Don't Cost $2,800 a Glass | Mark As Read |
In case you were wondering what insanely rich wine lovers like to do with their spare buckets of cash, the answer was provided by a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong last week: Spend $1,600,000 on 114 bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Con...
5 High-End, Superstar Wines You Can Always Find | Mark As Read |
We tend to think of the best wines in the world as rarities—in fact, the current term for super-sought-after, once-in-a-lifetime bottles amidst the sommelier crowd is “unicorn wines.” But the truth is that there are some great wi...
5 Wines From a South African Wine Star | Mark As Read |
“If there’s actually a time machine that works, it’s wine.” That’s a quote from Eben Sadie, arguably South Africa’s brightest young winemaking talent, and certainly one of its most quotable. The occasion was a v...
5 Perfect Steak Wines | Mark As Read |
Summer is done, grilling season is over, life is meaningless, and really, why not just eat lettuce from now on? That was how I was feeling recently, confronted with the sudden awareness of shrinking daylight hours and the first hints of cool weath...
3 Luxe Cognacs That Are Worthy of Their Price Tags | Mark As Read |
As with many luxury products, there’s Cognac and then, sir, there is Cognac. The Tesseron family has been in the Cognac business for over a hundred years, but they’ve stayed under the radar in the past, as their focus has been supplyin...
4 Spectacular Sauvignon Blancs from Austria | Mark As Read |
Winemaker Armin Tement of Austria passed through New York the other day, which gave me a chance to taste some of the most distinctive Sauvignon Blancs being made anywhere in the world (truly). Weingut Tement is located in southern Steiermark (Styr...
Light Reds to Fight Summer Blues | Mark As Read |
Summertime, you know, it’s all about the white wines. Well, and the rosé wines. And the sparkling wines. But what is there for people who get the heebie-jeebies when they’re presented with a nice glass of Sauvignon Blanc? Who th...
5 Value White Wines for Summer | Mark As Read |
What goes best with…? That’s the baseline wine-pairing question, and every wine expert worth his or her Riedel decanter has an answer for it. But realistically—and especially during the summer—there are plenty of times whe...
5 Ways to Celebrate the Summer of Riesling | Mark As Read |
Yes: The Summer of Riesling has officially started. So what does that mean for you? In case you missed the first six iterations of this restaurant-centric lovefest for all things Riesling, what happens is that, beginning June 21, a plethora of res...
5 Splurge-Worthy Wines for Parents of Recent Grads | Mark As Read |
An appealingly cynical English friend in the wine business once told me, “You see, what you do is that when your child is born, you purchase a case of vintage port from that year. Then, when the child finally graduates from college, you send...
Wines for Every Burger, from Veggie to Lamb | Mark As Read |
We Americans, we do like our beef. The average citizen of the US of A eats somewhere around 70 pounds of beef per year. Evidently we, as a people, cannot resist the urge to slap round patties of ground cow flesh onto hot metal and then devour the ...
5 Affordable Grill-Friendly Red Wines | Mark As Read |
Grilling season is here—the weather’s warm, the charcoal is available, and with any luck you’ve delegated some nearby child to scrub off all of last year’s grilled-on gunk with a handy wire brush. One hitch: according to th...
How to be a Wine Super-Sleuth | Mark As Read |
Want to taste like a wine pro? Here are the five questions you should ask yourself while you sniff and sip, plus three wines that will give you a mini lesson in acid, tannin and aroma. Acidity: Does the wine make you pucker? If yes, it's high in a...
Everything's Coming Up Rosés | Mark As Read |
There was a time, and it wasn't that long ago, when you couldn't give away a bottle of dry French rosé wine in the US. The zillions of bottles of White Zinfandel on store shelves had somehow worked a kind of evil spell on wine buyers' minds...
Why You Should Drink Portuguese Wine | Mark As Read |
What do Arinto, Baga, Castelão, Alfrocheiro, Rabigato, Códega do Larinho and Esgana Cão (which, rather evocatively, translates as "dog strangler") all have in common? They're all Portuguese grape varieties, which means they ar...
5 Hoppy Beers to Try Now | Mark As Read |
Every once in a while, gazing out at the world of beer, it's hard not to throw one's hands up in the air and cry, "Good gracious, what wild fantasies these madmen have wrought!" How, for instance, is one supposed to choose between a beer made with...
Spain Isn't Drinking Its Wine, So You Should | Mark As Read |
Take that, Italy and France. With the 2013 vintage, Spain stomped on its grape-growing European counterparts to become the biggest wine producer in the world. According to the Spanish government, Spain produced roughly 6.7 billion bottles of wine ...
5 Proseccos to Drink Now | Mark As Read |
The news that Prosecco outsold Champagne—307 million bottles worldwide compared with 304 million—may flabbergast some fizz fans, but it’s really no surprise. Prosecco is as hot as a cold, sparkling white wine can be, with sales i...
If You Can't Afford Chianti's Ultra-High-End New Designation, Drink These Bottles | Mark As Read |
News that the powers that be in Tuscany's Chianti Classico region have created a new, super-duper designation for the region's wines—Chianti Classico "Gran Selezione"—got me thinking. I've got no problem at all with a special category ...
5 Napa Valley Wines That Cost Way Less Than a House | Mark As Read |
I had the good fortune to be in California for Premiere Napa Valley, a glitzy shindig for which the valley's top wineries produce special, one-off cuvées to help fund Napa Valley Vintners (the local trade association). Made in small quantit...
Five Exceptional New Australian Reds | Mark As Read |
Australia is arguably the world's most dynamic wine region right now, says F&W's Ray Isle, who spent weeks hopping between the Yarra and Barossa regions and found a new Down Under vision. Here five exceptional new Australian red wines to try n...
Cabernet Is King | Mark As Read |
Thank you, University of Adelaide. It turns out that a researcher there, Professor Kym Anderson, has been engaged in a lengthy project analyzing the world's grape-growing regions and has determined—among many, many other things—that Ca...
Wines with Wings | Mark As Read |
Bird-booze lovers take note: Recent news has revealed that Napa Valley producer Duckhorn Vineyards has gotten in a snit and is suing the makers of Duck Dynasty’s Duck Commander wines. This, of course, casts a dark and ominous pall over what,...
How to Tell if Wine is Corked, Oxidized or Cooked | Mark As Read |
Watch out for flaws. If a wine doesn't taste good, there might actually be a problem with it. CORKED A natural compound called TCA can taint corks, making wine smell like wet newspaper or a moldy basement. OXIDIZED Faulty corks let too much oxygen...
Classic California Pinot Noirs | Mark As Read |
These wines are California Pinot Noir at its most expressive and complex. Sourced from among the state's greatest Pinot vineyards—Morning Dew Ranch in Anderson Valley, Hirsch on the far Sonoma Coast, Hanzell's historic property on Sonoma Mou...
5 Essential California Pinot Noirs | Mark As Read |
To get a sense of why people fall in love with Pinot Noir, it's worth spending a little more money. The following wines, made by some of the top winemakers in the state, are all great examples of regional terroir—the distinctive character th...
5 Super Value California Pinot Noirs | Mark As Read |
The best inexpensive Pinot Noirs may not have the nuanced aromas and terroir expression of higher-end bottlings, but they can still offer impressively bright fruit and an elegant texture. Under $15, Pinot Noirs tend to be made with blends of grape...
Understanding Pinot Noir from the Ground Up | Mark As Read |
There's a reason F&W's readers love Pinot Noir so much: At its best, it's transcendent. F&W's Ray Isle sits down with California wine legend Burt Williams to explore Pinot's allure and offer tips on getting a terrific bottle. The one wine ...
- Welcome!
- DeepWine aggregates blogs for the Wine industry.
- Custom Feeds
- Add any RSS feed to the information you read daily.
- Blocked Feeds
- Block feeds to remove blogs you’re not interested in.
- Account Settings
- Customize the site by adding or removing feeds.
Don’t have an account yet?
- Customize your settings
- Edit how your blog displays
- Add or remove blogs you read. Sign Up.
About Us
DeepWine is your source for all your Wine news.
Become a Featured Contributor
Become a featured contributor on DeepWine.com Get featured, it’s free
Know of a Wine blog that we're missing? Let us know! |