I just went to see "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical" in Sonoma. It had been a hot day, and it was refreshing to be outside as the night air cooled while listening to wonderful music. Her story is extraordinary: a shy, young songwriter who together with her partner Gerry Gordin created some of the most famous songs of the 1960s. After they separated, she became a singer herself, moving to Los Angeles to make her first album, Tapestry, released in 1971. What's this got to do with wine? Well, a sense of invigoration, a feeling of what moves and excites...

For the past few years, I've teamed up with Château Sonoma to provide sparkling wine for their loyal customers. Château Sonoma is a French inspired shop on Sonoma plaza here in California, providing French goods, antiques, and ambience. It's also family: my sister-in-law has run the shop for over twenty years and my office is just a block away. I want to share the three wines in the latest shipment (which are quarterly) because it's such an exciting line-up. I taste so many wines—thousands a year—to assess their quality and these three just hit the spot. Retasting them before putting...

Uruguay is a small country that gets overlooked, sandwiched between the much larger Brazil and Argentina. It was founded in 1828 as a buffer between those two South American giants, and from the outside it may seem that this country of three million people is nothing more than a geographical anomaly. But its capital city, Montevideo, was the main port for South America under Spanish rule and was the centre of philosophical debate in the late nineteenth century, which led to Uruguay hosting and winning the first football World Cup in 1930. And they won the World Cup again in...

I'm just back from the Loire Valley, spending time with family but also getting some wine tasting in. We stayed just north of Amboise and Tours, two towns which are surrounded by famous and lesser-known appellations. The overall area is called Touraine, starting where the river bends towards the Atlantic at Orléans and continuing to the red wine regions of Chinon and Bourgueil just east of Saumur. It’s a beautiful region, named "The Garden of France" for good reason, and spotted with many spectacular châteaux along the various rivers. For white wine, Vouvray is the most famous region, lying on...

Acidity gets talked a lot about in descriptions of and conversations about wines, but it doesn't always get explained very well. "This wine has high acid" sounds like it means something—and it does—but what exactly? One way of thinking about acidity in a wine is by drinking a glass of water because water is low in acid and high in alkaline. When filtering water, acid is removed to make it even more alkaline. Water is a life necessity, but it can feel heavy and flat on the palate. In complete contrast, citrus drinks like grapefruit, lemon, or lime juice can...