Chianti Classico is the first wine I truly loved. In the summer before my junior year of college, I spent two months studying opera in Arezzo, just east of the appellation’s edge. On that trip, I visited my very first winery, San Felice, where ...

Where do wine regions come from? The question might seem overly simplistic, yet every region has an origin story. While the Old World has several orders of monks—or perhaps Roman soldiers, or maybe Phoenician traders—to thank for the prol...

While the precise human discovery of wine will forever remain a mystery, it is certainly an ancient one. Evidence, such as the recent archeological discovery of ceramic wine storage casks in the present-day country of Georgia, suggests that vinicultu...

“Today’s a Landonne day,” Philippe Guigal says to me with boyish delight. As he reiterates later, Landonne was his vineyard. “I was born in January 1975, and Landonne has been planted in January 1975,” he explains. Phili...

In a 1991 segment of 60 Minutes, America was introduced to the now well-known “French Paradox,” the observation that the French have low rates of heart disease despite their rich diet. At the end of the show, with glass in hand, host Morl...

In an 1840 speech to the Illinois House of Representatives, of which he was then a congressman, Abraham Lincoln argued, “Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes b...

There are many legitimate reasons to abstain from or reduce the consumption of alcohol; for me, diet fads are not among them. I hope not to appear glib in passionately promoting wine culture and remain aware that for many, a mere sip of alcohol can l...

I’ve been told my palate favors decay. That might sound like an insult (and it may very well have been intended as one), but I find it a reasonable assessment. After all, my favorite foods include stinky cheese, dry-aged beef, and mushrooms&mda...