South Carolina, and wine
Wine and place, the place for wine – I was thinking about these on a recent trip to South Carolina, visiting my son at Clemson University to celebrate his birthday. Accompanied by my daughter, the three of us made excursions into the beautiful, and yes deep-South-rustic, countryside of the upcountry part of the state. We...
Ferment
A number of weeks ago I visited with the assistant winemaker at the New Jersey winery I used to be affiliated with. It was a bitter cold night and we did what we have so often done in the past, talk with glasses in hand as he tapped the cold contents of the silent tanks...
Vintage wine
Opening and drinking a wine with lengthy bottle age is an adventure, full of expectation, emotional and analytic reaction, connection and closure. In opening and drinking such a wine, you are completing a pact with the winemaker who fashioned it so many years before. You are opening up a window to a landscape, and...
Wine, beer, brandy, art?
The art of wine, the winemaker as artist … much time and energy has been expended parsing the question of whether the process of fermenting grape juice, and the libation which results in your glass, rises to the level of art. As I used to say in the tasting room of a winery I worked...