Filipa Pato started making wine in 2001, working with three rented vineyard plots. Since then, she and her husband, William Wouters, have steadily acquired vineyards in Portugal’s Bairrada region, including some more than a century old. Most of the vineyards are planted with Baga, the region’s distinctive red grape. Pato now farms 20 hectares across… Read More »

A three-day celebration in Logroño and Briones brought Rioja’s centenary year to a close, gathering more than 70 international delegates alongside guests from across Spain. Winery visits, extensive tastings and a grand dinner at the Vivanco Museum of Wine Culture showcased a region whose wines now span a striking range of styles and origins. The… Read More »

Kathleen Burk’s Wine: A Global History (Profile Books, October 2026) is an ambitious, 600-plus-page account tracing wine’s story across eight millennia. Burk, a professor emerita of modern and contemporary history at University College London, brings both academic experience and a longstanding interest in wine to the project. The book opens chronologically, then moves into regional… Read More »

Virginia was home to John June Lewis (1894–1974), the first African American in the United States to make wine commercially. His story began at Woburn Plantation in Mecklenburg County, where he grew up in the Burwell household. Lewis’s father taught him about growing vines and making wine. During World War I, Lewis served in Europe.… Read More »

Rabasco is a natural wine estate in Pianella, in Italy’s Abruzzo region, run by Iole Rabasco. After working as a lawyer, she took over the family winery in the 2000s. Its 11 hectares are divided among four vineyards, with vines more than 40 years old that have never been farmed conventionally. The estate has farmed… Read More »

Born in Denmark and raised on his family’s estate in Provence, Morten Hallgren seemed destined to return to winemaking there after studying viticulture and oenology in Montpellier and completing a harvest at Cos d’Estournel. But when the family property was sold, he set out elsewhere, making wine in Texas Hill Country before moving to North… Read More »

Lasse Peder Nielsen, partner and general manager at Copenhagen’s two-Michelin-starred Restaurant Koan, has spent more than 15 years in hospitality. His career has included leadership roles at acclaimed Scandinavian restaurants, and at Koan he helps bring together Nordic precision and contemporary Asian cuisine. A first taste of great Champagne Nielsen’s interest in wine took off… Read More »

United Airlines is investing in its business-class wine programme as airlines compete to improve their food and drink offerings. Its latest project, Air and Vine, is a custom Sonoma County red blend created with Jesse Katz of Aperture Cellars. The 2024 wine is scheduled to be served in Polaris business class in 2028. Katz settled… Read More »

Argentina and Chile’s wine scene is increasingly focused on expressing place and variety, moving beyond the once-dominant style of powerful, heavily oaked Malbec. A tasting of wines chosen by their makers offered a striking illustration of that diversity: among the twelve bottles, only one was Malbec. Matias Riccitelli Matias Riccitelli makes wines from Patagonia and… Read More »

Chêne Bleu winery sits in a ninth-century priory in the Dentelles de Montmirail, in southeast France. Its 30 hectares of vines are surrounded by forest within a UNESCO biosphere reserve, home to wildlife ranging from peregrine falcons and wild boar to around 1,400 species of butterflies and moths. Nicole and Xavier Rolet bought the estate… Read More »