All posts in February 2022

How did particular wines take the shape they did? One popular argument is that the possibilities are necessarily limited by the various atmospheric conditions, soil types and topographies that obtain in the vineyards from which they spring. This is plausible — but only to a degree. It’s true that each these naturally-occurring elements plays a…

Red and white might as well be the north and south poles of wine, reliably serving as stable orientation hubs on the vast and often confusing surface of planet Vino. Wine shops, wine lists and wine books all tend to organize themselves around these binary reference stations. So pervasive is the white/red divide that we…

The most common actionable fault in wine, by far, is what’s known as cork taint: A condition that announces its presence with an off-putting whiff of wet basement, soggy cardboard, mold, or vague but insistent mustiness. Less common (but not exactly rare) is a bottle that gives the impression that someone has poured out some…

“Casanova’s Europe” reveals a refined and visually seductive culture on the cusp of modernity—one characterized by pleasure seeking, movement across boundaries, and self-invention. Casanova himself inhabited many roles—entrepreneur, social climber, spy, author, and translator of the Iliad. But he was also a cheat and a libertine.” So read the online tease for an MFA’s exhibition…

As a child, your correspondent loved television, cars and the newspaper. He grew up with three outlets for TV programming, a trio of automakers, and a daily Boston Globe. How very quaint and meager this all seems now. No amount of nostalgia can induce me to want to return to the limited horizons of those days. The…