Wine

A bonanza of bargain-priced blends

Years ago, a California winemaker came to Miami touting his latest creation — a complex, expensive wine made by blending four or five well-known red grapes.

Wine

Mature pinot noir a savory favorite

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

Wine

It’s a good time to try a 2011 California chardonnay

California’s 2011 chardonnay is in the market now, and — despite some weather challenges — it’s an excellent vintage.

We’re still No. 1: U.S. keeps top spot in wine-quaffing count

America’s love affair with wine continues. We’re pulling further ahead of Europe in consumption, but are seeing increased competition from China.

Wine

Cheap, pleasant prosecco surges in popularity

If there’s an official wine of today’s 21-something generation, it’s the Italian bubbly prosecco. U.S. sippers buy a million cases a year, up 35 percent since 2011, according to a Wine Spectator magazine website.

Wine

The versatile, affordable whites of Alsace

A French winemaker once told me his dearly departed grandmother had lived under four different governments without ever moving from the house in which she was born. She was from Alsace, of course.

Wine

Lesser-known reds from Pulia and Umbria

Rome is eternal. Tuscany is terrific. But there is a lot more to Italy, and every region has its trademark wines.

Wine

Vertical tasting reveals nuances of port

It’s one of my favorite wine sayings: Wine improves with age. The older I get, the better I like it.

Wine

Vertical tasting shows variety of wine from year to year

Many wine fans believe California’s weather is so consistently warm and sunny that its wines vary little by vintage.

Wine

Keeping syrah, sirah and shiraz straight

Wine can be confusing, and three grape names in particular add to that perplexity: syrah, petite sirah and shiraz.

Wine

5 out-of-the-ordinary white wines worth trying

My wine philosophy has always been this: I would rather try a new wine that I end up not liking than the wine I had last week and the week before — even if it was great.

What’s in a (wine’s) name?

Ever wonder how wines get such quirky names — Mollydooker, Big House White, Frenzy, Gnarly Head, Mossback?

Wine

Lageder wine family uses biodynamics at some vineyards

If it’s true that great wine is made in the vineyard, not the winery, then the wines of Alto-Adige should be gorgeous. And they are.

Wine

Valentine’s Day wine pairings for every course

You romantic devil, you. You’re going to make dinner at home for your best girl on Valentine’s Day, aren’t you? Good for you. Everyone knows the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach. And, of course, her palate.

Wine

Super wines to match Super Bowl seafood dishes

Hooray! It’s going to be a Seafood Super Bowl. San Francisco vs. Baltimore. Cioppino vs. Chesapeake Bay blue crab. The signature foods of the two cities will be as exciting as the game. Maybe even as exciting as the TV ads.

WINE

Competition samples 600 wines in two days

Behind the scenes at an annual South Florida competition that shines the spotlight on American wines

Wine

Rich, hearty, red wines under the Tuscan sun

Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita was set in Rome, but if you visit Italy, you’ll find the real sweet life farther north — in Tuscany.

Wine

A dozen decent wines under $10

Right about now your Christmas credit card bills are arriving. You need a glass of wine, but can’t bear to put another charge on the plastic.

Wine

Wine: Bordeaux need not break the bank to be good

Wines from France’s famous Bordeaux region have a reputation for being pretty expensive. Chateau Cheval-Blanc, for example, is one of the world’s finest wines, but it’ll set you back $700 or more.

Wine

Winter’s the season for port

In winter, wine lovers’ thoughts turn to port. Visions dance in our heads of post-prandial pleasure, of sitting in plush leather chairs with a generous glass, a chunk of well-aged Stilton or Cheddar, a handful of walnuts and a plate of dried fruit.

South Florida Company Profile

Eppa sangria aims to create new premium category

Former Bacardi executives have launched a new firm, the Eppa Wine Company, selling a premium sangria they boast offers fruit juices loaded with antioxidants.

Wine

Bubbliest from $15 to $90 to toast the 2013

It’s going to be important to properly celebrate the departure of good-riddance 2012 and the arrival of hope-springs-eternal 2013. A suitable toast comes from that prolific writer “Anon.,” who penned: “May the best of this year be the worst of next.”

Wine

Christmas feasts to match your favorite wines

Christmas is coming, perhaps the finest feast day of the year after Thanksgiving. It’s time for the wine lover’s much anticipated ritual: prowling the cellar to see what wines you want to serve, then building a holiday meal around them.

Wine

A spirited selection of holiday gift books

Maybe you can’t get them a bottle of Robert Mondavi’s fabulous Opus One, but you can buy them a book about it. Next best thing, right?

Wine

Best bottles for gift-giving

Wine is almost always a welcome gift at holiday time. Even if the giftee isn’t a partaker, he or she can always serve it to guests or — one suspects — regift it to someone who will appreciate it.

Wine

California sun can turn cab franc into a star

It’s the plot of a hundred Broadway movies — a gal or guy wants to break out of the chorus line and becomes a star. But does she or he have what it takes?

Washington State: The nation's other wine country

When hard-charging former Texas Instruments exec Kathy Charlton offered Bordeaux winemaker Benoit Murat a job in her new winery on the Pacific Ocean side of Seattle in 1999, he wondered if she was serious.

Hip sips: A guide to South Florida wine tastings

Listen carefully. That slurping sound you hear is from all the wine tastings -- a score or more -- happening at shops, restaurants and hotels around South Florida each week.

Castles of Tuscany now welcome (tourist) invaders

In the rolling hills of Tuscany, where the sun casts a yellow-green glow over the landscape, causing the grape vines and olive trees to vibrate with color, every good-sized hilltop sports an ancient rock castle. In the Middle Ages they were fortresses, grim redoubts from which warriors under siege poured cauldrons of boiling oil down onto enemy soldiers trying to top the walls with scaling ladders.

Cuisine mirrors savory Thai culture

"You can eat spicy, sir?" Every time I order in a restaurant in this noisy, steamy, teeming, traffic-clogged, friendly and fascinating city, they ask me that. With the sweetest of smiles. But I'm worried. What are they preparing me for? Warning me against? Is there some hidden national conspiracy to fry the foreigner's palate, then protest that they tried to warn me?

Stunning wines, rich and opulent, emerge from Priorato

High in the Serra de Montsant mountains 100 miles southwest of Barcelona, an intrepid group of winemakers has banded together to take an ancient, fallen wine area and restore it to past glories. It's called Priorato.

For richer or for poorer, New Orleans won't lighten up

New Orleans, "The City That Care Forgot," clings proudly to the cuisine that time forgot, its huge portions, rich sauces and decadent desserts, be they in the Creole tradition of the seafood gumbo at Arnaud's, the Cajun "paneed" (breaded) rabbit at Brigtsen's or the traditional French Poulet Rochambeau at Galatoire's.

Vegas cuisine: New restaurants advance the city's reputation

A waiter at Picasso, the elegant restaurant in the Bellagio Hotel whose walls boast eight real (if minor) paintings by that fabled artist, reports that one diner recently ordered six $19 servings of foie gras with pear butter and pomegranate -- all for himself. As long as this gambling city attracts high-living high rollers like him, its boom in fine restaurants seems likely to continue.

New York's wine country

It's a cool, sunny morning, and the wineries of the Finger Lakes Wine Trail, in the rolling, vine-covered hills that slope down to deep blue Keuka, Seneca and Cayuga lakes in central New York, are pouring samples of their wares for visiting tourists. The wines are surprisingly varied -- both familiar and little-known, tracing the whole history of the American vine: chardonnay and riesling and merlot; baco noir and seyval blanc; catawba, elvira and Delaware.

The wines of Chile

After stumbling starts, Chile stands ready to make major splash in the world of top-value wines

Snapshots of South Africa

How could I absorb a country in a week? Especially one as complex and contradictory as this? I couldn't. Dashing frantically from sensation to exotic sensation, at the peak of endurance every 18-hour day, I experienced the trip as a blur.

Taking a South Africa dining safari

Flamingo, hippo among rare dishes

Winning the peace in Russia

My Russian opponent became Nikita Khrushchev. I was Sylvester Stallone. Or maybe Chuck Norris. Things weren't all that clear at the moment.

Green flash or no, Michigan's dune country is cool and homey

Geologists say the Sleeping Bear dune that towers 300 feet above Lake Michigan's blue-green waters here is simply a few billion tons of sand ground fine by glaciers, tugged down by gravity and piled back up by wind and waves.