Wine Blog

Sometimes the most enjoyable wine discoveries are the ones you are not expecting. A friend recently brought me a bottle of Quinta do Boição Colheita Tardia from Bucelas, Portugal. I saw Arinto on the label and assumed I was about to open a fairly typical Portuguese white wine. What I hadn’t paid much attention to […]

There is a small problem with discovering Portuguese wine: the more you learn, the less you seem to know. At first, things appear manageable. There is Port. There is Vinho Verde. Perhaps you know a few wines from the Douro or Alentejo. You learn to recognise Touriga Nacional and Alvarinho and begin to feel reasonably […]

A few years ago, while visiting the Bairrada region, I was shown an old vine growing on an abandoned property that had once belonged to a distant relative of the family. The owner had passed away years earlier, and nobody seemed entirely sure how old the vine was. What I remember most are the grapes. […]

There is something undeniably romantic about the idea of a little cellar. Not the kind hidden beneath a French château with walls covered in dust and old Bordeaux worth more than your car. Most of us are not living that life. Most of us are simply trying to keep a few decent bottles somewhere cooler […]

Crossword puzzles have a wonderful habit of making people feel both highly intelligent and deeply confused within the same five-minute period. One moment you are confidently filling in answers with dramatic speed.The next, you are staring at a clue involving fermented tree sap and wondering whether you accidentally enrolled in a botany course. One clue […]

At some point in almost every home winemaker’s journey, there comes a moment of optimism. The wine is finally finished.The fermentation drama is over.The kitchen no longer smells faintly of bubbling fruit and questionable decisions. And then reality arrives in the form of a small cylindrical object known as the cork. Corking a wine bottle […]

If you’ve come across the term blouge wine recently, you might have paused for a second and wondered: Is that even a real thing? It sounds like a typo. Or maybe a trendy new category. Something halfway between red and white… which, as it turns out, isn’t too far from the truth. Blouge wine is […]

If you spend any time reading about wine, you will quickly come across big names like the Decanter World Wine Awards or the International Wine & Spirit Competition. These competitions dominate headlines, and for good reason—they showcase some of the finest wines in the world. But what if you are not looking for a €100 […]

Italian wine has been traditionally linked to the art, traditions, and the locality. The idea of giving Italian wine has now become a much more curated and expressive one. The Italian wine gift baskets are no longer a group of bottles but symbolize culture, taste and personalization. With the new trends of gifting moving towards […]

There’s something slightly ironic about this clue. “French word for wine.” It looks so straightforward that you almost don’t trust it. You start wondering if it’s a trick. Maybe it’s something obscure. Maybe it’s one of those answers that only shows up in very specific puzzles. But most of the time? It’s wonderfully simple. The […]