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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 Exchange
The Carmenère grape is a red variety originally planted in the Médoc region of Bordeaux, France, where it was used for blending purposes in the same manner as Petit Verdot. Now rarely found in France, the world's largest area planted with this variety is in Chile in South America. Chilean plantings, brought from France in the 19th Century, were originally thought to be Merlot, before being correctly identified in 1994 and, since then, used as a distinctive signature by the country's producers. Carmenère wine has a deep red color and aromas found in red fruits, spices and berries, with tannins that are gentler and softer than those in Cabernet Sauvignon. Although mostly used as a blending grape, wineries do bottle a pure varietal Carmenère which. Its taste might also be reminiscent of dark chocolate, tobacco, and leather. The wine is best drunk young.
