Educational Blog

Announcing the WineSkipping Spring Wines!
🍓2021 Emme Wines Carignan - a bright fruity floral red
🍫2021 Ottavino St. Laurent - a spicy sophisticated red
🍯2017 Oremus Tokaji - a sweet honeyed wine with a history

Today I want to talk to you about making sweet wine from grapes infected by "noble rot". What? Yes, fungus is actually encouraged to grow on the grapes while they are on the vine. And it produces amazing results! 

Pétillant-Naturel, or “PetNat” for short, is French for “naturally sparkling” and is the OG Sparkling Wine!

If you know me, you know that bubbles are my favorite genre of wine, and that champagne is a big part of that! I do love my champagne! And with new...

I love the holidays! As they creep up on us, I'm thinking about some of the best products I've come across in the last two years and would like to share them with you! There is something for every price range.

I'm so excited to share these delicious wines from small producers with club members!

• 2021 Cote West Pet-Nat of Sauvignon Blanc (white)
• 2020 Two Vintners Columbia Valley Grenache (red)
• 2020 Ty Caton Petite Sirah (red)

As soon as the weather cools down and we round the corner to autumn, club members will enjoy these wines for the fall!

• 2019 Highlawn Picpoul Blanc (white)
• 2014 Bee Hunter Syrah (red)
• 2019 Cote West Counoise (red)

Did you know that every 13 seconds, a bottle of Rhone Valley wine being enjoyed someplace in the world? The Rhone is one of the major wine producing regions of France, often wrongfully overshadowed by Bordeaux or Burgundy. It's my favorite!

Can your wine actually have sodium in it?!  Surprisingly, yes. This varies by varietal, root stock, soil, terroir and region however a "typical" American wine (take a Merlot from Napa for example) will have approximately 5 mg of sodium per 4-oz pour (40 mg/l). Whites in general are slightly higher. But there are wines with far more sodium than that. Read this post for how sodium and other salts find their way into a wine!

Have you ever picked up on a subtle vanilla flavor in your wine? What about cloves and spices? That's not surprising as wine is often matured in oak barrels that share the self-same flavor compounds found in vanilla and cloves! And by "toasting" or firing the inside of an oak barrel, higher concentrations of these compounds are achieved!

2K years ago the ancient romans used cork to seal their wine. Today we still use cork to preserve our wine, but so much has changed. You have screw caps, glass and other manufatured products for wine sealing. Which is best? Which do you prefer?

95% of the wine sold commercially is intended for immediate consumption and not meant to age. If you let that $10 bottle of red blend sit around for 10 years, it will not get better. Read more to tell what happens to wine as it ages and what factors go into an "ageable wine".