Message in a Bottle
By Debra Meiburg MW The romantic notion of finding a message in a bottle is ever green. Bottle messages were featured in a 1999 film starring Kevin Costner, in a popular StarTrek: Voyager episode and in various novels, but most of us identify the phrase with the 1979 pop-hit by the Police. While the world’s [...]
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Mind your Madeira: Exploring “America’s Fortified Wine”
By Debra Meiburg MW Madeira is often touted as America’s Fortified Wine, but ask an American to describe Madeira and the most likely response is a blank stare. This toffee-flavored wine has fallen out of fashion in recent decades, but it was once the toast of the town. America’s founding fathers clinked glasses of Madeira [...]
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Sensual Relations: The funny business of wine intensity
By Debra Meiburg MW As any Sex & The City fan will tell you, intensity is a relationship-killer. Luckily, when it comes to wine, intensity is a relationship-winner. Intensity is a term loosely used to describe the strength and power of wine’s aroma. A wine can be described as low-, medium- or high-intensity based on [...]
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Elegantly Toasted: A history of “toasts” and how to make a good one!
By Debra Meiburg MW Some people like their toast in the morning, but others prefer to toast while holding a glass. No one knows for sure how the tradition of toasting began, but surely toasts have been around from the moment our ancestors discovered that fermented juices can make you tipsy. The Greeks are amongst [...]
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A-B-C of Chilean Wine: The must-know grape varieties, regions & producers
By Debra Meiburg MW Chile has some of the world’s most spectacular vineyards. Bounded by the Atacama desert, the Pacific Ocean, snow-capped Andes and southern ice fields, this is the only wine region where both cacti and snow are interspersed amongst vines. As with most of the Americas, grapes were first planted in Chile by [...]
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A Contact Sport: The in’s & out’s of wine fermentation
By Debra Meiburg MW A fermentation tank is like a good dance club: full of energy, heat and bubbles. Surging around the tank is the usual cast of characters: a mob of bacterial hoi-polloi trying to wheedle their way past choosy door bouncers and yeasts strutting into the club with only one thing on their [...]
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