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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
Rioja is a wine from a region named after the Rio Oja, in northeast Spain. Rioja wines are normally a blend of various grape varieties, and can be either red, white or rose. In whites, the wines are made from viura and verdejo, while in reds, the best-known and most widely-used variety is Tempranillo, blended with garnacha (grenache), graciano, mazuelo and others. Red Riojas often display characteristics of oak and vanilla, due to barrel aging with relatively high proportions of new oak. Red riojas come in various styles, defined according to the length of time spent in barrel, from joven (young) styles to Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva.
