Category: Vinsights
VINsights: Farming for Quantity Vs. Quality
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
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 …
How Sparkling Wine Works
All wines are bubbly at some point because carbon dioxide is a byproduct of fermenting sugar into alcohol. However, this natural carbonation is usually allowed to …
What To Do About Crystals in Wine
If you’re a wine enthusiast and opened your share of bottles, chances are you’ve encountered some that contain tartrate crystals, either as a visible sediment at …
Sorting Wine Grapes Into Flavor Families
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 …
Why We Decant Certain Wines
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
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 …
Pairing Wine with Spicy Foods
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
However, humans are hard-wired to appreciate sugar. Most newcomers to the category instinctively prefer wines that feature some detectable sweetness. Mass-market brands capitalize on this, and …
Does Wine Really Breathe in Barrels?
Most modern wine is made in stainless-steel tanks. But winemakers still use traditional oak barrels to refine and improve most premium red wines and some whites …
