Blog Index

Harvey Steiman

Price, Pleasure and the Power of Suggestion

Posted: 12:32 PM ET, 01/15/08

In a scientific study just reported, Caltech researchers measured brain waves in 21 test subjects as they sampled wines. The subjects' pleasure center got more excited when they thought they were drinking more expensive wines.

Wine marketers have known that for years, but the MRI evidence confirms it. Read more

James Suckling

Silly Wine Studies and Slow News Days

Posted: 12:31 PM ET, 01/15/08

Did any of you hear or read the story about a California Institute of Technology "study" that proved that people are influenced by the price when assessing the quality of a wine? In other words, the majority of the 21 people in the test preferred the expensive wine. Read more

Bruce Sanderson

Cool Wines

Posted: 04:14 AM ET, 01/15/08

[Note: Bruce Sanderson continues to report from Burgundy, where he is visiting domaines and tasting barrel samples from the 2006 vintage.]

What I keep hearing is that 2006 is a “cool” vintage. Read more

James Suckling

Amarones, Lunch and Dinner

Posted: 05:36 PM ET, 01/14/08

I had lunch on Saturday with a friend from Los Angeles and a couple of his wine collector buddies in Santa Monica at a restaurant called Locanda Portofino. It was good, simple Italian food—things like soft and creamy burrata cheese with Parma ham or a short pasta with squid in a spicy tomato sauce. Read more

James Molesworth

A Glass Ceiling for Chile?

Posted: 04:16 PM ET, 01/14/08

Wines are like friends. I particularly like wines that are like those friends you bump into after you haven’t seen them for a while. Sometimes they’ve lost weight and look great. Others show the wear and tear of life and you remember why you lost touch with them in the first place. Read more

James Laube

A Standoff in the Homemade Wine Showdown

Posted: 03:46 PM ET, 01/14/08

Midway through Saturday’s tasting of homemade wines, one of my friends summed up what had transpired: “What Mother Nature giveth, Father Time taketh away.”

We uncorked more than 20 wines in the span of three hours and there were some wonderful surprises, a few duds, a few corked bottles, yet overall enough evidence to suggest that even amateurs can make pretty good wine, as the homies stood up to some of the big guns. Read more

Bruce Sanderson

Back in Burgundy

Posted: 03:28 AM ET, 01/14/08

I’m back in Burgundy for a second look at the 2006 reds and whites. My first visit last June was an initial impression of the vintage as a whole. Now that the wines are at the end of their elevage, if not already bottled, I will be looking more closely at individual wines. Read more

James Laube

A Look Back at Some Homemade Wines

Posted: 05:39 PM ET, 01/11/08

Tomorrow I’m tasting a group of homemade wines from the 1980s and early 1990s, several of which I played a very small role in making. I helped pick the grapes and occasionally hopped in the fermentor, applying my size 13 stompers to the freshly squeezed must. Read more

Richard Betts

Buyer Beware?

Posted: 05:01 PM ET, 01/11/08

I say restaurant beware!

Most certainly I am not trying to set off an epidemic of returns-for-no-reason, not in the restaurant I work in, nor any other for that matter. What I am referring to is the dated and, frankly, rude policy of “buyer beware” when it comes to buying older wines on wine lists. Read more

Harvey Steiman

Back Label Blues

Posted: 09:26 AM ET, 01/11/08

Do you read back labels on wine bottles? Most of these little puffs of PR are designed solely to entice someone holding the bottle in a store to put it in the cart and roll it up to the checkout. Although many make me roll my eyes, some good ones offer useful information. Read more

- Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 -