Author: Stephen Meuse

In Europe’s more northerly vineyards the harvest is underway as we write.  2013 has turned out to be a problematic year in many places, with yields down for a second or … The grapes that fall along the wayRead more

There’s something out there called the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory. It’s run by the University of Pennsylvania Museum and one of the things that keeps its inmates occupied is the examination of some … Why wine, anyway?Read more

OLIVIER COUSIN FARMS 12 hectares (around 30 acres) and makes about 3000 cases of wine annually from gamay, chardonnay, cabernet franc, grolleau, and chenin blanc in the Layon Valley in the central … Whose grandfather wins?</br>Read more

CENTRAL BOTTLE HAS a real commitment to winemakers who do things the old-fashioned way, who work with traditional materials and methods, who make honest, authentic wine, who shrink from excessive manipulations … Manipulation is not a four-letter wordRead more

A dozen years ago my wife and I visited a couple who had renovated a hoary old estate in the Perigord, deep in the Mother Goosiest part of the French southwest. … For wine drinkers, no right </br>to freely assembleRead more

Earlier this year I was on the island of Vulcano, one of a flotilla of small land masses that poke up from the Tyrrhenian Sea off the northeast coast of Sicily. … Wine’s old frenemy</br>Read more

Drop by the Central Bottle tasting table any Thursday, Friday, or Saturday (or any night at Belly Wine Bar, below) and you’re likely to see a crowd of regulars milling about … Beyond swirl, sniff and sipRead more

I suppose that when the people I once worked for — Nick, Maureen, David and Liz — were traveling together in Italy and noodling the idea of opening a wineshop together … <span class="entry-title-primary">Containing ourselves</br></span> <span class="entry-subtitle">The ceramic revolution and the invention of moderation</span>Read more

For wine’s chattering classes no subject is more captivating than the elements that make one varietally-similar wine distinguishable from another. Plant a chardonnay vine in the Sierra Foothills of California and … It’s the little things that count</br>Read more

THE GREAT RUBE GOLDBERG wasn’t an inventor, he was a cartoonist. The insanely clever, laughably complicated chain-of-events machines (string, J, fires pistol, K.  Shot scares monkey, L, forcing razor, N, onto egg, O)  that … Shot scares monkey</br>Read more

THE FELLOW ASSIDUOUSLY OGLING his glass of red wine is a detail from a lithograph that hangs in my office, one of a trio I bought from a shaggy bouquiniste (quayside seller … Caught lookingRead more

If you love the world of wine, there’s no corner of its territory that’s without interest – not a single one you wouldn’t care to explore if you had the time … In love with the LoireRead more