Wine Spectator June 15, 2019

Visit WineSpectator.com/061519 to find links to all of the following resources. FREE RESOURCES FOR ALL OUR WINESPECTATOR.COM READERS PARTY PLANNING Hosting a barbecue bash on Memorial Day? We highlight delicious new recipes and point you to great wines for the occasion. Check out our seasonal features for pairing suggestions with well-priced, newly released wines recommended by our editors. VALUE WINE PICKS Wine Spectator’s free Xvalues app for iOS and Android devices features a regularly updated library of our editors’ latest reviews of highly rated, widely available wines, and highlights five categories: top values ($12 or less); reds for $20 or less; whites for $20 or less; sparklers at $40 or less; and seasonal or holiday picks. Look for it in the App Store and on Google Play! WINE SPECTATOR VIDEO Watch all our great…

In recent years, two types of wine have soared in popularity: dry rosé and sparkling wines. These wines used to be afterthoughts, marginalized for special occasions—a glass of pink by the pool, a bubbly popped in celebration. Today, they are the fastest-growing categories in the U.S., and both have established themselves as versatile, fashionable and consistently good. In our June 30, 2018 cover story, “Rosé’s New Era,” we took an in-depth look at rosé’s rise. News editor Mitch Frank reported on rose’s sales growth, the styles and regions delivering the best bottles, and the celebrities-cum-vintners who have jumped on the bandwagon. This year, with rosé fully entrenched in American wine culture, we showcase its stylistic diversity and harmony with foods, offering recipes from top chefs to pair with rosés from Provence, California…

Insights on Italy I enjoyed the articles on Italian wines (“Italian Gems,” cover, April 30), but I think that the authors have overlooked the excellent wines that are produced on the Adriatic side of Italy. In the region of Le Marche, the white Verdicchios, Pecorinos and lately the Passerinas are today of high quality and good value, while the red Rosso Picenos and Rosso Coneros are some of the best red blends in Italy. There are also very good wines coming from Abruzzo featuring the Montepulciano grape, and from Puglia featuring the Primitivo grape and a number of others. Neil Duarte,Columnist,WineLoversPage.comLeander, Texas Spilling the Beans [Senior editor Alison Napjus], my heart is broken. For years my wife and I and our wine-loving friends have enjoyed Aglianicos, smug in having found a wonderful but little-known…

Another fight has broken out over who can use the name of Napa Valley’s most famous vineyard, To Kalon. The Vineyard House, a winery owned by Jeremy Nickel, filed suit against Constellation Brands in March, claiming that Constellation’s Robert Mondavi Winery fraudulently obtained a trademark of To Kalon and that Constellation has marketed it deceptively. Nickel also contends that a portion of The Vineyard House property is part of the original To Kalon vineyard, and thus should be entitled to use the name for its wines. The lawsuit raises old questions: Can a vineyard name be trademarked? And what exactly is the true To Kalon? In 1868, Hamilton Walker Crabb, a pioneering vintner, purchased 240 acres of Oakville land between Highway 29 and the Mayacamas Mountains, north of Oakville Grade Road,…

A series of powerful storms inundated Sonoma County in February and March, dumping 7 inches of rain in Sebastopol and as much as 20 inches in Venado, an unincorporated community in the hills between Guerneville and Healdsburg, all in the span of just 48 hours. The ensuing floodwaters wreaked havoc in the area. The Barlow, a shopping district located at the eastern edge of Sebastopol and home to several wineries and tasting rooms, was one of the waterlogged areas. “It’s a big mess,” said Pax Mahle, owner and winemaker of Pax Wines, one week after the storm. “We have sustained serious damage to our tasting room and winery, and have a fulltime tasting room staff that is on-site helping with the cleanup,” he added, while also expressing gratitude that the buildings…

A new robot is prowling the vineyards of Champagne. Bakus (android for “Bacchus”) is France-based startup VitiBot’s attempt to improve sustainable viticulture. It can weed vineyard rows and, at 2.75 tons, it’s light compared to most tractors, reducing soil compaction. “We are confident that Bakus will soon become the salutary god of the vineyards of France and of the world, which will facilitate the long-awaited environmental transition,” CEO Bernard Boxho told Wine Spectator, which sounds suspiciously like French for, “I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.”…