Think of water, and images of vast oceans, white-capped rapids, babbling brooks, and placid lakes come to mind. Water, however, exists beyond these everyday blue bodies, and today many climate scientists are focusing their attention on another catego...

Chartreuse is an ancient, elusive elixir that has been made for centuries by French monks. Throughout its history, it has been a digestif, a popular cocktail ingredient, and the inspiration for naming a color between yellow and green. In recent years...

The story of California wine hasn’t been told in a book in more than a decade. In the meantime, the community of wine has expanded, social media has changed, and consumers now demand more than the Cabernet and Chardonnay that helped make Califo...

Over the past couple of years, Brunello di Montalcino DOCG has undergone a pivotal shift in its vintage evaluation system with the introduction of Brunello FORMA. This new, data-driven approach was designed to provide a more comprehensive assessment ...

Vermouth is an aromatized, fortified wine. The drink is so immersed in cocktail culture that it often flies under the wine-education radar, though it is, indeed, made from a base wine, fortified, infused with botanicals, and sweetened to varying degr...

The learning curve of wine can be steep. Grape varieties? Thousands. Soils? More than your brain can hold. Regions? Buckle up and get your map out. But one mercifully simple part of wine education is yeast. There’s really only one yeast to memo...

I’m delighted to share an extract from my book, Wines of the Loire Valley. It’s been a huge privilege to research and produce a new reference for this significant, but often overlooked, region of France. Writing the book has allowed ...

When it comes to sparkling wine, Champagne has done all the heavy lifting of establishing the image of bubbles as one of celebration, class, and sophistication. With Champagne commanding an average bottle price of €20 in France and $58 in the US...

For much of recent history, fine drink in the context of fine food has meant wine, and many a tome have been written about the right and wrong ways to pair the two. But these ideas about right and wrong are evolving and expanding. Increasingly, peopl...

Dear GuildSomm readers, It’s good to be back. I have many fond memories of writing for this site and am thrilled to return here to promote my newest creation, Wine Confident. I wrote this book not so much for the budding professional but for th...