Every issue, organized by what you want to learn.
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These 6 issues, in this order, are the fastest route from second-guessing to tasting with confidence.
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The Saturday flagship by topic, plus The Decant, our Wednesday sidebar on wine culture. Filter to what you want.
Buying & Value
Under about $15, most of the price pays for markups, tax and glass. Above it, the extra buys costlier grapes, cellar time or a famous name. 3 blind pairs show which.
The Decant
A quarter-hectare plot and low yields explain why Leroy Musigny is so scarce. Auction buyers and a thin market of listings explain why it lists at 2.5 times Romanée-Conti.
Tasting & Palate
Kendall-Jackson has printed “Reserve” on its best-selling Chardonnay since 1982, and no law defines it. 3 bottle pairs, most under $25, show which label words carry a rule.
The Decant
Monticello warned the auction house weeks before the 1985 sale. A lab, a court, and a glass engraver followed. For 20 years, the trade trusted its tasters instead.
Tasting & Palate
In 2000 a Napa winery charged $10 more for its screw-capped Cabernet. Taste what a closure controls, in 3 experiments, one under $25.
The Decant
Tignanello left the Chianti Classico rules in 1971, sold for about $6 in 1974 by Piero Antinori’s account, and costs about $185 today. Chianti’s grape rule changed 3 times before it allowed the blend.
Tasting & Palate
Whether the winemaker meant the air to get in decides fault or style. Acid, tannin, sugar, alcohol, and sulfur decide how long a wine can take it. 3 experiments, one pair under $50.
The Decant
Georges de Latour held an altar-wine permit from 1907. He came out of Prohibition with intact vines, a full cellar, and 4 times the production he went in with.
Tasting & Palate
I decant a couple of bottles a week and can taste the difference. If evaporation does the work, an open bottle breathing through a penny-sized neck should barely change.
The Decant
In January 2010, a letter reached Aubert de Villaine: 1 million euros, or Romanée-Conti dies. Two vines had already been drilled and injected to prove the threat was real.
Tasting & Palate
Sommeliers build recall with three moves: one anchor bottle, words before the reveal, and a next-day test. This week you run all three at home, with bottles from $10 to $40.
The Decant
In 1855, Bordeaux’s brokers ranked 58 chateaux by sale price, with no tastings. The rank guaranteed the money, and the money bought the quality that keeps the rank looking right.
Tasting & Palate
Temperature, glass shape, and pour size each change what you taste. 3 experiments with 1 bottle under $20 show you all 3.
The Decant
The Gallo story runs from a 1933 tragedy to 1 in every 4 bottles of American wine, with a 6-year family lawsuit in the middle.
Aging & Cellaring
Fruit fades, tannins soften, and new flavors arrive. 3 side-by-side tastings, one pair under $40, let you taste a decade of age without owning a cellar.
The Decant
Serge Hochar’s vineyards sat on one side of the front line. His winery sat on the other. What the wine that crossed teaches about trusting your own palate.
Tasting & Palate
A season, a place, and a person made every wine you drank this quarter. 3 re-tastes to prove you can tell them apart, and the first word on the free live tasting on February 15.
The Decant
Rudy Kurniawan ran a counterfeit wine operation out of his kitchen in Arcadia. The experts drank his blends happily for years. What their applause says about your glass.
Regions & Terroir
Every glass is the sum of a season, a place, and a person. 3 questions, asked in order, tell you which one made the thing you loved.
The Decant
The most hated man in American wine asked why an $80 bottle is worth forty times a $2 one. The research answers him, and so does his own guilty plea.
Buying & Value
Fire reaches wine country almost every year now. Your bottle stays clean because of testing and quiet dumping you never see, tuned to an average palate that is not yours.
The Decant
Jean-Rémy Moët had the Emperor, the mayoralty, and the larger house. Barbe-Nicole Clicquot had a boat and a head start.
Regions & Terroir
Harvest in Beaune runs 13 days earlier than it did in 1988. Growers have 4 ways to answer that, and the one they picked is the wine in your glass.
The Decant
A chemist sold the trick, dozens of producers bought it, and a tax deduction brought it all down.
Tasting & Palate
You never have to go fully blind on day one. Hide the price first, then the place, then everything. Each layer you cover teaches your palate a different lesson.
The Decant
A Korean importer sold 50 cases in two days because of a comic book. That is the bar prestige television keeps failing to clear.
Regions & Terroir
The back label promises somewhere special. 3 side-by-sides show you when to believe it, and when the premium went to a copywriter.
The Decant
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
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
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
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
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
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
The Maestro trained the winemakers who beat France in 1976. Most people drinking Napa today have never heard his name.
Tasting & Palate
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
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
This is the difference between smelling a wine and decoding it.
The Decant
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
Cool or warm, the vineyard’s climate sets a wine’s sugar, acid, and alcohol before fermentation starts.
The Decant
A $1.36 billion sale ended the family’s claim to the label. What they kept couldn’t be sold.
Tasting & Palate
One quarter, eleven issues, one shift: you started tasting choices where you used to taste magic.
The Decant
The business rewards volume and penalizes moderation. That’s finally starting to crack.
Buying & Value
Cultured yeast, fining agents, added sugar, and sulfur all go in. Here’s how to taste the difference.
The Decant
The scale promised objectivity. The economics and the science tell a stranger story.
Buying & Value
Vessel, method, and blend: one Saturday afternoon each.
The Decant
Before Netflix’s Uncorked, the wines that made and unmade Napa’s mythology.
Tasting & Palate
The hidden role of lees: bread, cream, and texture explained.
The Decant
What 2004’s wine moment can teach us about the one coming next year.
Tasting & Palate
Vertical, horizontal, axial: a working method for the wines that actually move you.
Regions & Terroir
The most important Bordeaux you’ll never drink is the one the winemaker rejected at the bench
Tasting & Palate
Concrete, clay, and large-format oak each solve a different problem.
Regions & Terroir
Three variables explain most of what’s in your glass.
Tasting & Palate
Memorizing regions and grapes never built confidence. Here’s what does.
Tasting & Palate
And the one question that tells you instantly whether a wine has it.
Tasting & Palate
That flinty, stony quality in wine? It’s not coming from the soil. Here’s the real science.
Wine Culture
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.
The Polished Palate lands every Saturday, The Decant every Wednesday. Subscribing is free, and your welcome email starts you on four at-home tasting exercises.