“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

"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?

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.

Standing atop the stone staircase on Cerro Santa Lucia, the hill on which this city was founded in 1541, looking east past the verdant vineyards that dot the suburbs, you can see the dramatic, snow-capped Andes.