If you've been reading along all year you likely have all your Christmas dinner wines purchased and comfortably resting at home awaiting tomorrow's dinner hour. If you've been otherwise occupied and waited until the last minute, time is running out. Most
Taylor Fladgate Port is one of wine's mystical names. It began in the 17th century when certain privileges were given to British merchants to establish trade between England and Portugal. In the case of Taylor it began in 1692 in the upper reaches of
Wine writers love to use the terms "best buy" and "best value" to make sure you pay attention to their review, but what does best value really mean when you open that bottle of wine? If price is seldom a measure of quality, can it possibly be a measure
If you are in search of useful wine gifts, you are in luck. Today, we look at some of the basic requirements for any aspiring wine drinker and we pair them with appropriately tasty wine. It's one, or two-stop shopping, for wine lovers and these gifts
Real fall weather arrived this week in British Columbia. Although with so much snow in the forecast it seems as if winter isn't far behind. With much cooler temperatures, it's the perfect time to pull out the winter coat, or in this case Côte, as in
Early-bird tickets to the 2012 Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival go on sale at the end of the month, so it may be instructive to think about some of the better tweets coming out of Asia this week from WineFuture Hong Kong 2011. Spaniard
The Best of BC Release is underway at 21 Signature and select BC Liquor Stores. The selection, as compiled by British Columbia portfolio manager Stephen Schiedel, offers you a glimpse at some of the best wines made in the province. As is the
The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain," at least according to the Liza Doolittle's character in My Fair Lady. Yet as much as that sentence was crafted to help her correctly pronounce the English language, a meteorologist she ain't. Having just traversed
A Taste of Black Rock Resort has come and gone and so, too, have nearly 100 lucky Vancouver Sun subscribers who joined us in Ucluelet last weekend to taste wine, dine, hike and enjoy the fabulous West Coast lifestyle. After spending three days with so
Eduardo Chadwick grew up in the shadows of the 6,959 metre high Mount Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Southern Hemisphere. Some 50 years later, his winery - Viña Errazuriz - has taken up the Aconcagua (pronounced ACK-Can-COW-ah) mantle placing the
As the 2011 Okanagan Wine Festival winds down, most wineries will only be starting to get into the thick of the harvest. Most of the early-picked grapes harvested over the last 10 days, and even that's not so early, are deliberately picked at lower sugars
When Americans start talking about taxing the rich and removing personal tax deductions such as mortgage payments, the economy is moving into a sector few if any living experts have ever experienced. We can argue over whether we are in another downturn,
The quote of the year in the wine business, at least so far, appeared in an online Decanter magazine story earlier this week covering the 2011 harvest in Bordeaux. An unnamed Bordeaux producer of a renowned left bank château was quoted as saying, '"We
The Chenin Blanc Association of South Africa traces the history of its prized grape as far back as the ninth century to the Anjou, Loire Valley region in France. It was likely referred to as Chenere before it was renamed Chenin Blanc, after Mont Chenin
Earlier this summer, I was one of two dozen judges at the 6th Wine Access International Value Wine Awards (IVWA) competition in Calgary. The blind tasting event is run by Wine Access Magazine out of Calgary, where I have been the Vancouver-based editor-in