The Wine Idea

PACKING UP A CASE of wine for a Central Bottle guest recently, I reached back in to re-arrange a pair of wines so that the Argyros Santorini Assyrtiko wasn’t adjacent the … Austerity measures</br>Read more

IF ANYTHING CAN BE SAID to be genuinely innate about human taste it’s our appreciation and enjoyment of the flavors of ripe fruit. We came down from the trees already addicts … Rocks in our wine,<br/>or just in our heads?Read more

EMILE ZOLA’S 1873 novel Le ventre de Paris (‘The Belly of Paris’) opens with a pre-dawn parade of horse-drawn carts laden with produce making their way to Les Halles, the city’s great public … Wine and the city</br>Read more

VINTNERS WITH PROPERTY in the steep hillsides that overlook the Mosel River between Trier and Koblenz have a worldwide market for their cooly aromatic, austerely-structured white wines.  Today, growers there can … In Karl Marx’s youthful and spirited defense of Mosel wine-growers the foretaste of a revolutionary careerRead more

CAMDEN VALLEY ROAD runs east-west from Sandgate, Vermont across the state line into Washington County, New York.   It’s a winding, two-lane country road with hardly any traffic on it, and it’s partially … <span class="entry-title-primary">Historic embrace</span> <span class="entry-subtitle">The love affair between tree and vine goes way back. Here's their story.</span>Read more

Decanting wine conjures visions of cobwebby bottles, guttering candles, crystal goblets, and white-gloved butlers. Performed primarily to relieve wines of sediment, the technique that’s known as the soft decant once involved … Gimme air!Read more

The hip, cozy watering hole known as Backbar occupies a back room of  Journeyman restaurant in the scrappy Boston satellite city of Somerville.  With its usual team of  cocktail jockeys off … Field blends have something to say, but is anyone listening?Read more

THE SKETCH AT LEFT is a bit of graffiti scratched by a first century Roman who may have been keen to have some fun caricaturing then Emperor Nero – as some … Of sassy barmaids, drinking by the numbers, and barbarian mannersRead more

            THE STORY OF HOW a genial Swiss wine importer named Christoph Künzli undertook the recovery of the Boca vineyards in Italy’s Piedmont region when they were … Is there a bias against the blend?</br>Read more

LAST WEEK A FRIEND showed up with a bottle of 20 year-old grand cru white Burgundy that for some reason had rather fully oxidized despite having been kept in a wine-friendly … <span class="entry-title-primary">Of orange wine, faded jeans, and shabby chic</span> <span class="entry-subtitle">What distinguishes intentionally and accidentally oxidized white wine?</span>Read more

FOR AMERICANS, France’s Loire Valley is familiar as the source of the lively, mineral-inflected white wines of Sancerre and Muscadet. The region is also home to a broad, if less frequently … Light, appetizing, <em>chilled</em> Loire reds </br>Read more

CENTRAL BOTTLE  WAS POURING three so-called orange wines at its most recent Thursday Night Wine Bar event.   We’ve written twice before on a category (I’ll cite those posts momentarily), that … The House of OrangeRead more