Tropical Wine Making: How Is It Even Possible?

Vines need a proper winter to rest. Growers near the equator, from Brazil to India to Thailand, just fake one instead.

Wine On A Volcano: How Etna's Soil May Have Saved It From Phylloxera

Vines growing in the sandy soil of an active volcano turn out to be one of the rare European survivors of the pest that wiped out almost everyone else.

Vin Jaune: Jura's Wine Aged Under Its Own Living Skin

Left alone in barrel for six years with no top-ups, growing its own living layer of yeast for protection — Jura's most stubbornly independent wine.

Amarone And The Art Of Drying Grapes On Purpose

Same goal as botrytis — shrivel the grape, concentrate the juice — reached with a drying rack instead of a fungus.

How The Same Grape Produces Great Wines All The Way From Norway To Thailand

Bred in Germany for a short, cold Scandinavian summer, and now thriving in a Red Bull-owned tropical vineyard near the equator — for exactly the same underlying reason.

Ice Wine, Explained: Wine Made From Frozen Grapes

No fungus, no waiting for extra ripeness — just grapes left on the vine until winter freezes the water clean out of them.

How Many Grapes Are Actually In A Bottle Of Wine?

Somewhere around 600 to 800 — and working out where that number actually comes from explains why yield restrictions exist at all.

Does The Shape Of Your Wine Glass Actually Matter?

A little, physically, in ways you can reason about. A lot less than an eight-glass matched set would have you believe.

What Actually Happens During Fermentation?

Yeast eats sugar, produces alcohol and carbon dioxide as waste, and stops when one of the two runs out. That's the entire mechanism underneath everything else.

Why Does Wine Give You A Headache (But Beer Doesn't)?

The sulfites on the label are the wrong thing to be angry at. The real suspects are harder to spot and nowhere near as settled.

What's The Difference Between Organic, Biodynamic And Natural Wine?

One is a real legal certification, one bolts a cosmic farming philosophy onto that certification, and one is, technically, an unregulated promise.

Why Do Chardonnay Taste Buttery and Creamy?

The grape does not grow tasting like popcorn. A specific cellar process, entirely separate from oak, is responsible.

What Is Corked Wine, And How To Notice It

It is not bits of cork in your glass. It is a contamination compound most people have tasted without realising it.

Why Would You Make Wine From Rotten Grapes?

A fungus that ruins grapes in the wrong conditions concentrates them into something extraordinary in exactly the right ones.

How Climate Affects Wine

Same grape, same winemaker, wildly different wine — just move the vineyard a few thousand miles and change the weather.

What Is Terroir?

A word that sounds too elegant to argue with, attached to one of the most genuinely contested ideas in wine.