• Decoding Italian Wine: A Beginner’s Guide to Enjoying the Grapes, Regions, Practices and Culture of the “Land of Wine”

    Decoding Italian Wine: A Beginner’s Guide to Enjoying the Grapes, Regions, Practices and Culture of the “Land of Wine”

    Wine books typically fall into two categories: those that are 1,000 pages and cover every acre of grape growing across a particular country, and those that try to squeeze the same amount of information into a smaller number of pages. While there’s a place for those books, we believe an introductory study of wine can…

  • New Book – DECODING SPANISH WINE – Available Now

    New Book – DECODING SPANISH WINE – Available Now

    It’s finally here. We’ve been working on this one for a while now and I’m super pumped to finally put it out in the world and be able to share it with you. Our new book “Decoding Spanish Wine: A Beginner’s Guide to the High Value, World Class Wines of Spain” is now available in print…

  • DECODING FRENCH WINE BOOK – AVAILABLE NOW

    DECODING FRENCH WINE BOOK – AVAILABLE NOW

    The wine world is intimidating when you are just starting out. France alone has more than 25,000 wineries and the bottles are labeled with various phrases, regions, vineyards, vintages and classifications, often times with no mention of a grape varietal. How are you possibly to know what to buy, what’s inside the bottle, and if…

  • 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Started Drinking Wine

    10 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Started Drinking Wine

    There’s no question that the wine world can be intimidating for those early on in their wine journey. I remember a while back when I was at a business dinner and one of the gentleman I was dining with was ordering wine by the producer and year without looking at the wine list. I hoped…

  • 18 of The Best Wine Quotes

    18 of The Best Wine Quotes

    “Wine is sunlight held together by water.” – Galileo “What I like most is wine that belongs to others.” – Diogenes “We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology…

  • 7 Easy Wine Hacks To Make You Look Like a Wine Pro

    7 Easy Wine Hacks To Make You Look Like a Wine Pro

    #1 Reinserting the stained side of the wine cork Here’s an easy one to get started. When you are reinserting a cork back into the bottle for storage, you should always insert the stained side towards the wine. Essentially putting it back in the same way it came out. Granted, it will be a little…

  • How to Open a Bottle of Wine When the Cork Breaks

    How to Open a Bottle of Wine When the Cork Breaks

    Breaking a cork inside the neck of a bottle when opening wine can be particularly frustrating, especially if there’s a crowd.  While this doesn’t happen often (primarily on older bottles where the cork has experienced deep seepage or become dried out and brittle), it’s usually not that hard to stage a strong recovery and remove…

  • 8 Tricks To Finding Awesome Wine Values

    8 Tricks To Finding Awesome Wine Values

    We all want to find the best wine values we can, but often times we aren’t looking in the right places, or observing the right things.  Are you looking at the label, the ratings, the price discount, or the sign that says “staff picks” next to the wine? Those can be helpful as part of…

  • Under Appreciated And Under Priced Summer Wines You Need To Drink Now

    Under Appreciated And Under Priced Summer Wines You Need To Drink Now

    Summer time is a great time for wine, friends and fun.  But after a few weeks of drinking those California Chardonnay staples or the standard Sauvignon Blancs that everyone loves so much, where should you go next?  What are some other summer options that can quench your thirst while offering a little something new, a…

  • How To Tell If Riesling is Dry or Sweet

    How To Tell If Riesling is Dry or Sweet

    Riesling is one of the most misunderstood and arguably under-appreciated varietals in the modern wine world. And I’m really talking about the perceptions of your general everyday wine buyer. Not the wine geeks. I heard a quote recently about Riesling that I thought really summed it up right. It went something along the lines of…

  • 7 Lesser Known Wine Regions That Deliver Exceptional Quality and Value Right Now

    7 Lesser Known Wine Regions That Deliver Exceptional Quality and Value Right Now

    Developing a complete appreciation for the world of wine frequently requires stepping out of your comfort zone.  And it’s hard to do, and rather expensive if you do it regularly. But on every trip to the store, I try to buy one bottle that I am not familiar with, or a wine from a region…

  • How to Ace Your Next Visit to a Wine Tasting Room

    How to Ace Your Next Visit to a Wine Tasting Room

    Visiting a winery, especially for the first time, can be intimidating and uncomfortable, but if you follow these tips and put yourself in the right frame of mind, visiting wineries can be one of the most rewarding, fun and educational things you do on your wine journey. The first thing you want to do is…