Regions & Terroir
The Terroir Question: 3 Tastings That Show What’s Real and What’s Marketing
The back label promises somewhere special. 3 side-by-sides show you when to believe it, and when the premium went to a copywriter.
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New to The Polished Palate?
These 6 issues, in this order, are the fastest route from second-guessing to tasting with confidence.
How Wine Education Gets the Order Wrong (and How to Flip It)
Why a Bone Dry Wine Can Taste Sweet (and How to Tell the Difference)
Why Great Wine is Built on a Fight Between Acid, Tannin, and Fruit
Minerality Doesn’t Come from Minerals. Here’s What You’re Actually Tasting.
How the Same Grape from Two Climates Creates Two Completely Different Wines
Browse every issue
The Saturday flagship by topic, plus The Decant, our Wednesday sidebar on wine culture. Filter to what you want.
The Decant
What Chasing a 100-Point Score Actually Costs, in Dollars, Vines, and One Criminal Conviction
One spring Robert Parker missed his Bordeaux trip, and economists finally got a control group. What they measured explains the last forty years of wine.
Regions & Terroir
Why the Same Wine Can Taste Different from One Year to the Next
A vintage is one season’s weather. It changes everything in some regions and barely registers in others. Knowing which is which is a superpower at the wine shop.
The Decant
Why Oakville Cab Tastes Different from Stags Leap (and What to Look for on a Label)
Two Cabernets grown a few miles apart, and nothing on the front label seems to explain it. Learn to read the two addresses and you can predict their style before you pull the cork.
Regions & Terroir
Why a Wine from a Desert Can Taste Fresher Than a Wine from a Cool Coast
Elevation, the direction a slope faces, and the ground itself each control how a grape ripens. Together they set a wine’s acidity before a winemaker makes a single decision.
The Decant
How 3 Women Rewrote what Napa Cabernet is Supposed to Taste Like
Two built the rich, high-scoring style that made Napa famous. One refused, keeping elegance alive until the world came back to her. Together they authored the argument over what Cabernet should be.
Regions & Terroir
Old World vs. New World Used to Tell You How a Wine Tastes. It Doesn’t Anymore.
The country on the label used to predict a wine’s style. Climate and the winemaker’s intent do now, and the label still hints at both once you know what to read.
The Decant
Modern Napa Has One Founding Father. He Fled the Russian Revolution to Get Here.
The Maestro trained the winemakers who beat France in 1976. Most people drinking Napa today have never heard his name.
Tasting & Palate
Why a Bone Dry Wine Can Taste Sweet (and How to Tell the Difference)
Fruitiness is an aroma your nose reads. Sweetness is sugar your tongue measures. Learn to keep them separate and your preferences will finally make sense.
The Decant
Why a Bottle of Screaming Eagle Costs $4,000 (and How Little of It is the Wine)
The winery sells it to its members for around $1,000. On the open market it fetches 4x or more. That gap is the most honest lesson in American wine.
Tasting & Palate
How to Decode Any Wine’s Aroma (Every Smell Comes from Just 3 Places)
This is the difference between smelling a wine and decoding it.
The Decant
What Napa Actually Won at The Judgment of Paris
A month of anniversary coverage treated 1976 as Napa’s victory lap. The prize that actually mattered was quieter, and it still shapes what you pour today.
Regions & Terroir
How the Same Grape from Two Climates Creates Two Completely Different Wines
Cool or warm, the vineyard’s climate sets a wine’s sugar, acid, and alcohol before fermentation starts.
The Decant
How the Mondavi Family Built (and Lost) the Most Valuable Name in American Wine
A $1.36 billion sale ended the family’s claim to the label. What they kept couldn’t be sold.
Tasting & Palate
What 3 Months Inside the Cellar Taught You About Wine
One quarter, eleven issues, one shift: you started tasting choices where you used to taste magic.
The Decant
I’m a Certified Sommelier. The Wine Industry Has a Drinking Problem We Don’t Talk About
The business rewards volume and penalizes moderation. That’s finally starting to crack.
Buying & Value
What’s Actually in Your Wine, and Why Almost None of It is on the Label
Cultured yeast, fining agents, added sugar, and sulfur all go in. Here’s how to taste the difference.
The Decant
The 100-Point Score, Explained By Someone Who Stopped Trusting It
The scale promised objectivity. The economics and the science tell a stranger story.
Buying & Value
How to Know What a Wine Tastes Like Before You Open It (in 3 Weekend Tastings)
Vessel, method, and blend: one Saturday afternoon each.
The Decant
Napa Valley’s History in 7 Wines: From Mondavi to the Lost Vintage
Before Netflix’s Uncorked, the wines that made and unmade Napa’s mythology.
Tasting & Palate
Why Oaked vs. Unoaked is the Wrong Question (and the 3 Vessels You’re Missing)
Concrete, clay, and large-format oak each solve a different problem.
Regions & Terroir
Terroir Gets the Credit, Fermentation Shapes the Style
Three variables explain most of what’s in your glass.
Tasting & Palate
How Wine Education Gets the Order Wrong (and How to Flip It)
Memorizing regions and grapes never built confidence. Here’s what does.
Tasting & Palate
Why Great Wine is Built on a Fight Between Acid, Tannin, and Fruit
And the one question that tells you instantly whether a wine has it.
Tasting & Palate
Minerality Doesn’t Come from Minerals. Here’s What You’re Actually Tasting.
That flinty, stony quality in wine? It’s not coming from the soil. Here’s the real science.
Wine Culture
Special Report: Taste in the Age of AI
Sam Parr just told 1.5 million people that taste is a moat. The New Yorker, New York Times, and Silicon Valley also weighed in this week. Here’s what they’re missing.
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