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Salt & The Cellar by Akira Back, Orlando's newest Fine-Dining entrant
Chef Akira Back’s Salt & The Cellar, ensconced at ette, one of Orlando’s newest concept hotels, is currently providing one of the most scintillating dining experiences on offer in the city. I was...
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A tasting of selected Carpineto Tuscan wines
Kissimmee's Vintage Vino recently hosted a tasting of selected Carpineto wines and, while I was unable to attend in person, I bought the particular wines to taste at my leisure.The Carpineto winery was...
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The story of wine in Iran
In his book exploring the origin of viniculture, Dr. Patrick E. McGovern pointed to a number of ancient wine origin stories and highlighted the Persian entrant. According to the tale, one King Jamshid,...
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Il Guercio and Uno from the Tenuta di Carleone estate (Radda in Chianti,...
Tenuta Carleone di Castiglione, located in Chianti Classico's Radda in Chianti, is the fruit of the vision of an Austrian entrepreneur - Karl Egger -- and the winemaking skills and regional knowledge...
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Contextualizing the newly minted Chianti Classico sub-zones
There has been a lengthy ongoing discussion among invested parties as to the need for sub-zones within the Chianti Classico DOCG. In June 2021, a specific sub-zone proposal was presented to the members...
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Ancient Wine: The Phoenicians and the spread of wine across the Mediterranean...
According to Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind), the genus Homo evolved in Africa and spread to Eurasia 2 million years ago, resulting in the evolution of different Homo species....
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Lebanese Wine: Renaissance Interruptus
My most recent post covered the role of the Phoenicians in the spread of wine across the Mediterranean. As was the case for Iranian wine, production in the Levant contracted with the introduction of...
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Recent Developments at To Kalon Vineyard (Oakville AVA, Napa)
I recently came across a Decanter article on To Kalon Vineyard attaining California Certified Organic Farmer (CCOF) certification and it prompted two observations on my part:I had not updated my...
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A review of the farming philosophies and viticultural practices of Collective...
I have been casting around for an obvious way to reference the land that is the combination of the historic To Kalon vineyard and the Stelling Extension, a task made more difficult in light of a...
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Detert Family Vineyards: The least-heralded of the Collective To Kalon wines
The common ancestor of Detert Family Vineyards and Macdonald Vineyard was a plot hived of from the larger Stelling Oakville holdings in 1954.Hedwig Detert -- the great-grandmother of the current...
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Upending the story of ancient grapes: Genesis of the effort
A recently published grapevine genetic study (Y. Dong, et al., Dual domestications and origin of traits in grapevine evolution, Science 379 (6635), pp. 892 - 900, 3/3/23) "has upended the history of...
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ChatGPT on the comments on the Kerin O’Keefe article on decanting
I recently posted a Kerin O’Keefe article on wine decanting to my personal Facebook page as well as to the Barolo and Barbaresco Facebook group page. The article elicited strong responses and I thought...
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Rewriting the story of ancient grapes: Establishing genetic populations and...
A recently published grapevine genetic study (Y. Dong, et al., Dual domestications and origin of traits in grapevine evolution, Science 379 (6635), pp. 892 - 900, 3/3/23) "has upended the history of...
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The case for dual domestication of vitis vinifera, as per Dong, et al.
The recent Dong, et al., study has upended the conventional wisdom of a single-point vitis vinifera domestication somewhere in the Caucasus over 8000 years ago. In a series reporting on the study, I...
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Grapevine domestication: A tale of two centers and selected traits
Dong, et al., (Dual domestications and origin of traits in grapevine evolution, Science, 3/3/23) have postulated, based on their study results, a dual origin for vitis vinifera stemming from...
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Georgia is not the source of all European wine grape varieties; the Levant is
The commonly held belief was that the wild grapevine vitis sylvestris was domesticated at a single point and spread to the rest of the world therefrom. Researchers have named the...
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The domestication of vitis vinifera: The physical environment
According to Dong, et al., two variants of the wild grape vitis sylvestris were simultaneously domesticated in the Caucasus and Western Asia resulting in two variants of vitis vinifera. The...
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The Natufians: The culture most likely to have domesticated vitis sylvestris
Given the location (The Levant) and timing (11,000 years ago) espoused in the Dong, et al., study, it is most likely the Natufian Culture that domesticated the progenitor of the major European wine...
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Grapevine diversification in Europe after the Western Asia domestication event
At this point, we know that there were two simultaneous domestications of vitis sylvestris approximately 11,000 years ago. We also know, based on the Dong, et al., study, that the Caucasian domesticate...
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Is Fonterenza Tuscany's best kept secret?
I love both the story and the wines of Montalcino so whenever I get a recommendation of a must-try Brunello, I jump at it. Such was the case for the 2016 Fonterenza Brunello di Montalcino and I share...
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