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Buyer’s Guide to VINTAGES January 21 Release
John Szabo’s VINTAGES Preview January 21: Top California, As Voted by You; Icewine at the Table, Best 2018 Brunellos, Refreshing Aussie Reds and How to Prune a Grapevine By John Szabo, MS, with notes from David Lawrason, Michael Godel, Sara d’Amato and Megha Jandhyala We’ve got plenty of coverage for you in this report, featuring […] More
The Art of Vine Pruning: Getting Schooled in Lake County, California
By John Szabo, MS The most critical vineyard action takes place in the dormant season: pruning. Get it wrong, and your production drops at best. At worst, you shorten the life of a vine and compromise wine quality, while also causing yourself more work in the summer. This past December I took a trip down […] More
Text and Photos By John Szabo MS After tasting close to 150 Brunellos from the 2018 vintage last November in Montalcino, arriving in markets now, the overarching conclusions are that the vintage will provide plenty of drinking pleasure over the near and mid-term. It’s not generally a year that needs decades in the cellar. On […] More
National Wine Awards of Canada
Discover Canada's best wines! In 2021, 24 judges tasted over 2,200 wines from 260 wineries across the country to identify Canada's top wines.
View Award-Winning WinesThe Exchange
The Exchange is a club that taps into the world of wines beyond retail stores and delivers a curated, mixed case of top quality wines directly to your door. All the wines are 90pts+ and have been carefully chosen by our panel of critics for their quality and value.
View The ExchangeAlbariño is the primary grape used to make dry white wine in the Rias Baixas (Lower Inlets) section of the Galicia region of Northwestern Spain. Considered by many to be Spain's premier quality white wine, Albariño is also known in Portugal as Alvarinho and often used as a component of Vinho Verde. Weather conditions in the Rias Baixas are generally cool, windy and rainy. Vines must be trained high and open to allow winds to dry them out and avoid the ongoing threat of rot, mildew and other fungal diseases. Notably, Albariño grapes develop thick skins here, contributing to their intense aromas. Typically, wines made from Albariño are very aromatic, often described as having scents of almonds or almond paste, apples, peaches, citrus, and flowers or grass. Albariño wines are particularly suited to seafood due to their bracing acidity - which some producers have tempered with extra roundness, by aging the wines on lees, giving them a fuller texture. This grape's inherent tartness should be embraced in youth, for wines made from albariño do not age well, and the vibrant aromas begin to noticeably fade within months of bottling.