Paul Lukacs, author of “American Vintage: The Rise of American Wine” (Houghton Mifflin, 2000), has written another great book about American wines that every wine lover, especially Francophiles, should own. The beauty of his new book, “The Great Wines of America: The Top Forty Vintners, Vineyards, and Vintages” (W.W.… Read more

Barolo is the king of Italian wines. Made from the nebbiolo grape grown in a small, sharply delimited area surrounding the village of Barolo, near Alba in Piedmont, it requires a king’s ransom to put some in your cellar. Even after paying $50 to $100 a bottle and often more, you need plenty of patience because it’s a wine that needs many years of bottle aging before its complex glories emerge.… Read more

Vintage Port, though one of the world’s great wines, is made the same way as all Port. The grapes are harvested, crushed, and fermented for only three days, instead of the usual 7-10 days for red table wine. At that point, the winemaker adds brandy, which raises the alcohol to 20 percent and kills the yeast, stopping fermentation before all the grape sugar has been converted to alcohol.… Read more

Back in the ’80s, when syrah, grenache, and mourvèdre were hardly known outside their traditional home in France’s Rhône Valley, a group of winemakers advocated growing them in California.

One of these Rhône Rangers was Byron ”Ken” Brown, who introduced Rhône varieties into the Santa Ynez Valley of Santa Barbara County while working at Zaca Mesa Winery.… Read more

Although the film “Sideways” highlighted Southern California as pinot noir country, Oregon is also a leading source of superb wine made from that grape. Many comparative tastings have shown that Oregon’s pinot noirs rank with the world’s best, and to many consumers it has become that state’s signature wine.… Read more

Frank Altamura, the winemaker at his eponymous property in California, is a farmer at heart. ”The big fun is in the vineyards,” he says.

With no formal winemaking training, he learned by doing, first at Sterling Vineyards and then at other notable Napa Valley properties: Trefethen, Caymus, and Dunn.… Read more

Although Spain has been producing wines since the Phoenicians settled there, they have become fashionable only recently. The modernization of Spain’s wine industry and leap in quality come from an influx of investment after it joined the European Community in 1988.… Read more

Like other fine wine, champagne can improve with age, as Duval-Leroy’s nearly 10-year-old vintage champagne demonstrates. Although 1996 produced excellent wines throughout France, no region did better than Champagne, where it will rank as one of the greatest vintages ever.

Most champagne is nonvintage; a blend of wine from several years’ harvests aimed at producing a consistent house style year after year.… Read more

Chile, initially known for its well-made under-$10 wines, has entered the upscale market with bottlings in the $60-plus range, such as Almaviva, a joint effort of Bordeaux’s Mouton Rothschild and Chile’s Concha y Toro, Casa Lapostolle’s Clos Apalta, and Vinedo Chadwick.… Read more

With wine, as with most of life, it pays to listen to people with experience.

George Bardis, who runs the wine department at Martignetti’s Soldiers Field Road store and tastes thousands of wines each year, recently returned from Hungary where he sampled scores.… Read more

It’s always a treat to run across a wine that delivers more than it is supposed to. And it’s a special treat when the wine is made from chardonnay, since wines made from that grape can be monotonous.

Although Californian and Australian chardonnay dominate the American market, the finest ones come from Burgundy.… Read more