Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Ever-expanding wine world takes your palate on a journey

• From The Smithsonian Magazine
For all of recorded history and even before, wine has been intrinsic to the lives of the Greeks, Romans, and other peoples of the Mediterranean and Caucasus regions.

The best wines in ancient times were largely reserved for a select few. For others, wine was rough, sour, acrid -- consumed not in pursuit of some form of connoisseurship, but largely because it was safer than water.

Most wines were consumed locally, not far from where they were made. By the 18th and 19th centuries, however, some wines were identified as better than the rest and became commodities to be shipped to wherever they were in demand. Their names became famous: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, sherry, port, Madeira, Rhine wine. In the past quarter century, this portfolio has expanded dramatically.

We now live in an era that would be almost unrecognizable to wine lovers of our grandparents’ generation. Never before have so many different wines, from so many places, in so many diverse styles, been available to so many people around the globe. Of the seven continents, only Antarctica does not have vineyards. 
Go here for the full story.
Go here to visit the Capital Region Brew Trail
Go here to visit Dowd's New York Wines Notebook
Go here to visit Notes On Napkins 

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