The boom and bust cycle, mass hysteria, get-rich-quick, and all the other terms that go along with economic bubbles from tulips in Holland to stock in the South Sea Company and from tech stocks to subprime housing, bubbles seem to be a consistent part of our lives. One might think that this wouldn’t apply to [...]

Many people might answer this question with, “well it already is!” But when compared to the French and their habit of having a glass or two with lunch, it can appear as if wine and Americans are as compatible as oil and water. It’s true though that wine consumption is surging in the United States. [...]

The average American drinks only 1.72 gallons of wine each year. Compare this with 40 gallons of soft drinks or 25 gallons of coffee! As for the French, they are the pros in this category, drinking an average of 17 gallons of wine each year!

In the 1600s a Benedictine monk called Dom Perignon observed that wooden stoppers wrapped in oil-soaked rags used to seal bottles often popped out, and so he replaced them with the pieces of cork to seal the sparkling wine. Cork soon become essential for wine bottling. The world’s first cork stopper factory opened in around 1750, in Anguine [...]

Did you recently buy a bottle of wine, and if so, did it happen to have an animal on the label? You may have noticed that over the last decade or so wine makers have increasingly “modernized” their labels to attract consumers, and a particularity to this wine label modernization is the presence of some [...]

Of the many different aspects that affect the finished product of a wine, oak wraps it all up. Literally. Oak barrel fermentation not only differs according to the type of wood used, but the fermentation process is also highly affected by the “toast” amount. American oak mostly comes from the Eastern part of the United [...]

While leading clients through our tasting at WineInProvence, the main goal is to demystify the often intimidating world of wine in a fun and relaxed atmosphere where questions are encouraged. During a recent Signature French Wine Tasting with two lovely American clients, we were asked about the “lace” of the wine in the glass. At [...]

During my recent trip to Scotland, I definitely knew I wanted to sample some of Scotland’s most significant spirit- whiskey. I visited the Tullibardine Distillery outside of Edinburgh, where there has been a brewery or distillery on this sight since the 12th century. It’s claim to ame is that in year 1488, King James IV [...]

Here’s all you ever wanted to know about oak. Okay! Go! –The use of oak plays a significant role in winemaking and can have a significant effect on the finished wine- affecting the color, flavor, tannin profile and texture of the wine. –There are about 400 species of oak, though only about 20 are used in making [...]

One of most common question we get asked during our tastings is, “How is rosé wine made?“ For the sake of maximizing our tasting time, we keep the answer pretty straight-forward and give the short and sweet explanation of the technique most commonly used today. However, there are in fact several different ways for producing rose [...]