Brad Webb with Ambassador Zellerbach (Photo courtesy of Hanzell Vineyards)

Brad Webb had landed the dream job. It was 1956, and he’d just been appointed winemaker at a new winery, Hanzell, founded by James D. Zellerbach, the wealthy US ambassador to Italy. Zellerbach had spared no expense in pursuing his dream of making classically styled Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to rival the wines of Burgundy. Webb had at…

I have fond memories of living in Sydney in 2005 and 2006. Coming from England, the city’s lifestyle was eminently appealing. Runs from Bondi to Bronte for a dip in an ocean-filled pool etched into the cliffs. Long lunches, dominated by oversized sunnies and cold glasses of Chardonnay. Leaving the office with the sun still shining for happy hour bites at a street-side cafe, often with the glinting waters of one of Sydney…

Part of the job of a sommelier is to accurately represent wine regions to guests. So how are sommeliers doing when it comes to the wines of the Russian River Valley? Rod Berglund of Joseph Swan Vineyard thinks there's room for improvement. “The Russian...

Wine has been intertwined with history from the outset of Western Civilization. Grape harvesting flourished in the Ancient Near East and Egypt; evidence shows Celtic tribes in Gaul cultivated wild grapevines prior to the arrival of the Phoenicians, who...

When I lived in Los Angeles in the late ‘90s its downtown, filled with beautiful Art Deco and Beaux Arts architecture, was a wasteland. There was very little nightlife, and the streets were ominously empty after dark. Going for drinks in the area’s dive bars was slightly risky and seldom attempted alone. By 2006, when I returned from a few years in NYC, not much had changed. The ensuing ten years, however, have ushered…

The holidays are upon us—the most wonderful time of the year for many, the most insane time of the year for those who work in restaurants. During my Beverage Director days I loved being busy and looking at the sales every night, but I would dread counting...

A couple of years ago I was asked by the Guild of Sommeliers to write an article about the wines from Southwest France.  I enthusiastically agreed, but said that I could not write just one article because the region was too vast.  Instead, I decided to break it down into three articles, to be researched in the three regions over three successive summers. The first installment dealt with the wines from Irouléguy, Jurançon…

Headlines about the most recent high profile counterfeit wine scandal read like the chapters of a crime novel: A Vintage Crime; Wine Fraud Case Takes Another Twist; Counterfeiter Sentenced to Ten Years. Rudy Kurniawan, an Indonesian immigrant who at one...