What is amaro? The best answer might be a paraphrase of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of pornography: you know it when you taste it. Amaro can be defined simply—it’s the Italian word for bitter (plural: amari)—but the category of bitter liqueurs it represents is vast and undefined. And it’s about to become an even bigger feature of our lives.

The world of wine is always in flux. A mere 60 years ago, locals in Chablis could ski down Les Clos in winter without touching a vine and Diamond Creek’s Gravelly Meadow was a barren hillside. In Tuscany, it was only 25 years ago that Poggio di Sotto produced their first wine. Changes in trends, discoveries of plots, development of new techniques, and shifts in philosophy happen all the time. As sommeliers, we have…

At a GuildSomm workshop at New York City’s Corkbuzz in 2013, Master Sommelier Laura Maniec led a blind tasting with seasoned and fledgling sommeliers. At one point, after pointing out our confusion of American and French oak once again, Maniec commented, “I find that sommeliers are so used to smelling ripe fruit and oak together that it is hard for them to distinguish a wine that has ripe fruit and no oak from one…

Editor's note: For more on this subject, check out Rod Phillips’ new book, French Wine: A History. UC Press is graciously offering GuildSomm readers a discount. Order online using the code 16M4197 for 30% off.

France occupies a special place in the world of wine. Only one wine is a household name globally, and it’s French: Champagne. There’s still a widespread belief that the best French wines are the world…

By Tina Caputo

Thanks to DNA testing, anyone can identify a mysterious vine simply by sending a sample off to the lab. But for Virginia-based vineyard consultant Lucie Morton, a world-renowned ampelographer, it’s still crucial to know how to distinguish vines the old-fashioned way: by sight and touch.

It took Morton years to learn ampelography, a skill that few viticulturists in today’s high-tech world still work to…

My path to the Master Sommelier Diploma ran through Boston. At the time, it was a nice restaurant city but a bit of a wine wilderness. People liked what they liked, but no one was too concerned about the details. When I passed the Advanced Exam, there were two other green pins in the city, and that was about it. As I started to prepare for the MS in earnest, I considered leaving my home city behind, lining up interviews…

If there is one native Spanish grape that a typical wine drinker will know, it is Tempranillo, and for most consumers, the story ends there. In the second half of the 20th century, it was this widespread lack of recognition of Spain’s native grapes combined with the ease of growing French varieties that gave nonnative grapes inroads in Spain. Winemakers didn't want to explain Monastrell when people already knew and were…

For a long time, fine dining in Mexico City meant fancy French restaurants. Restaurateurs would import big names from Europe for bumper fees; French wines became synonymous with good (and expensive) taste. But the local dining scene is undergoing steady change. Some of Mexico City’s most exciting restaurants are its cocina de autor, eateries owned and driven by Mexican chefs who trained overseas and returned to…

The first recorded wine production in the United States took place in Virginia soon after the British established a colony there in 1607. Despite the historical achievement, however, the early years of winemaking in the region were rocky, and it wasn’t until the 1980s that Virginia’s winemakers truly caught their stride. Today, Virginia ranks fifth in the nation for wine grape production—not bad for a state…

Blind tasting is, to the perception of the masses, the most exciting magic trick sommeliers perform. How many times have friends outside the industry brought you a glass of wine and demanded that you get to grape, region, and vintage on the spot? They believe in us and are fascinated by blind tasting—but few understand what it takes to get to this level.

Whether you are studying for a Court of Master Sommeliers exam…