Tag: VINsights
VINsights: Farming for Quantity Vs. Quality
by: Marnie Old
Fine wines taste different from mass-produced wines for the same reasons that heirloom tomatoes from your garden taste different from supermarket tomatoes. This is driven more …
Making Sense of Fortified Wines
by: Marnie Old
Fortified wines are wines to which distilled spirit has been added at the winery. They usually contain 15% to 20% alcohol, so they taste stronger and …
Why Are There Crystals in My Wine?
by: Marnie Old
If you have been in the wine business long enough to have opened hundreds of bottles, chances are you’ve encountered some that contain tartrate crystals, either …
Sorting Wine Grapes Into Flavor Families
by: Marnie Old
Every grape used for making fine wine has its own unique flavor profile, but the more wines you taste, the easier it becomes to discern that …
How Does Wine Get Aromas and Flavors?
by: Marnie Old
Newcomers to wine often find it confusing that wine rarely smells or tastes like grapes. Most white wines smell more of tree fruits like apples or …
Why We Decant Certain Wines
by: Marnie Old
Decanters have long been used to make wine look pretty, or to control its temperature, but improving flavor by decanting is a relatively recent phenomenon. It …
How to Read Wine Maps Historically
by: Marnie Old
Many puzzling aspects of today’s wine landscape make more sense if we consider their historical context. For example, understanding where, when and how quality-oriented winemaking first …
Three Ways Rosé Wine is Made
by: Marnie Old
Rosé can be a bit of a mystery. Labels rarely offer much information about how the style is made. Books and classes explain that pink wines …
Pairing Wine with Spicy Foods
by: Marnie Old
Foods with spicy heat can be stimulating and enjoyable, but are also famously hard to pair successfully with wines. Some wines are better equipped than others …
How to Talk About Sweetness in Wine
by: Marnie Old
Sweetness in wine — or its absence, known as dryness — causes more confusion for consumers than any other sensory trait. This is largely due to …
