Wine

By Courtney Cochran

With rosé wine enjoying an unprecedented level of popularity stateside - The Nielson Company recently revealed that sales of premium pink wine rose an astounding 53.2% this year - there's never been a better excuse to drink pink on Mother's Day.  Indeed, from supermarkets to Costco to the nation's most tony wine merchants, bottles of pink are appearing on store shelves in greater numbers than ever before, leaving you no excuse not to go pink this Sunday.

Whether your taste is grounded or grand, a few essentials will ensure your home wine bar is primed for the long haul:

Temperature plays a crucial role in the life of your wines. If you do not plan on cellaring your wine, consider a refrigerated system from Sub-Zero. This will also take care of humidity, which should be moderate.

By Robert P. Farmer

Most people rightly associate Wine Country - no matter which region you're talking about -- with the country. It's hard not to think about with Wine Country experience and not think about the bucolic countryside. It's the most common setting when one thinks about wineries and vineyards. But there is a growing trend in cities around the nation that is shaking that perception by its rootstock. The Urban Winery Phenomenon has recently been making more noise in the wine industry than a traffic jam in the heart of Market Street. And not only is it changing the way people taste wine, it's changing the entire concept of what constitutes a winery.

By Robert Farmer

In the landscape of the written world, the dubious "cliché" is one of the most maligned creatures--something to be steered clear of, a menace to descriptive prose, ridiculed and frowned upon and, ultimately, often unavoidable. And since the written word also applies to wine labels, the loathsome creature frequently creeps its way onto that space as well.

By Robert Farmer
For a time -before I saw the light - I was somewhat opposed to the multi-winery tasting room. My preference had been for a tasting room to be not only to focus on a single winery's vintages, but also to be attached to that winery. It makes sense, you have to agree. But as I'm sure you'll also agree, I am right in tossing aside that narrow-minded attitude and embracing the new-style tasting room, the likes of which are proliferating these days in unexpected places. And so you can understand that recently, the opening of the Press Club in San Francisco was happy new for me. Not just because I happen to live in San Francisco, but also because this is an exceptionally fine example of the concept.