The Wine Scholar Guild (WSG) has initiated an ambitious undertaking aimed at developing a new way to assess wine: the Architecture of Taste Research Project (ATRP) The Architecture of Taste Research Project aspires to find a way to empower the individual to taste and describe wine with an enriched...

August is the calm before the harvest storm. Vegetative growth has slowed considerably and, in some climates, stopped completely due to water stress. The vine now turns its efforts to ripening the fruit that it has developed earlier in the season. Although the berries are close to their final...

By July, the period of rapid shoot growth is over. The vine has now created all the leaves needed to ripen its fruit. In wet climates, shoot growth may continue but at a much slower pace. In dry climates, shoot growth stops completely. In very dry areas, the tendrils on the shoot can even dry out...

June is a time of great change in the vineyard. At the beginning of the month, the vines have short shoots with berries that have just set. By the end of the month, the shoots are almost fully grown and have discernable clusters. This is a period of rapid cell division for the berries. With regard...

After frost season, bloom (flowering) is the first real milestone of the vintage. Harvest follows approximately 100 days after this event. Now that the growing season is in full swing, weather has real repercussions for how the vintage shapes up. Grapevines have what are known as “perfect...

Is a wine horizontal or vertical? Square or round? Hollow or dense? Relaxed or tensed? Grainy or smooth? This is a small sample of GeoSensorial Tasting vocabulary — a method that seeks to empower the taster to feel, interpret and give voice to wines of place. By focusing on mouthfeel and...

With warmer weather, bud break comes quickly. The tiny buds swell and then quickly reveal small, fuzzy, green leaves as the shoot primordia begin to elongate. These shoot primordia will become fully developed shoots over the next few weeks! Although the exact timing of bud break varies from...

KD: Let’s zero in on alcohol, because — unlike pH or tannin — it is a data-point on every wine label, and one of the only technical clues on a wine label that can offer insight into the balance of the product. What can consumers and wine students glean from reading this number on the label?...

KD: One of the key words we hear a lot about in the wine industry — both from wine professionals and winemakers — is a desire for “freshness” in a wine. It is a rather nebulous term (and hard to argue: who doesn’t want freshness?) but is there something to it? Have wine styles shifted toward more...

KD: I want to circle back to this issue of personal taste, Julia. Do you feel that writers and educators have an obligation to at least disclose these personal taste sensitivities to their readers or students, so that descriptors of wine are seen through a lens of experience instead of something...

KD: Let’s shift gears a bit. I can see how a consumer or new student of wine could easily confuse “moderate” or “medium” elements in a wine as “balance.” I know I struggled with that early on! But certainly a high-tannin or high-acidity wine, or a low-alcohol or high-alcohol wine, could still be...

KD: The fulcrum analogy is a perfect visualization of it, Julia. Thank you. On to our last topic. As wine writers, we always get a front-row seat to the generational battle over ripeness, and in the age of climate change, that battle has become even more accentuated. I think of a recent trip to...

KD: So much of this conversation — balance, freshness, alcohol content, etc. — stems from when the grapes are harvested. My question has to do with ripeness, because the ultimate outcome of a wine’s composition often stems from when and how the winemaker harvests the grapes. However, it means...

KD: Andrew, how do you discern balance when you are tasting wines? Do you have any tips? How much of it is a feeling? AJ: The first thing to say here is that I strongly believe that the key to finding and understanding balance in a wine becomes apparent as you drink a wine, rather than when you...

KD: You touched upon this a moment ago, Andrew, but currently, lower alcohol wines are in vogue within many circles of the wine industry, and among consumers. Within other circles, so-called “Parker” wines — a style predicated on boldness, richness and amplified tones — remain the driving force....

KD: I want to get both of your opinions on this next question: the elements that help preserve wine long-term — for example, acidity, tannins, and alcohol — are also the ones we discuss in terms of balance. Wines that age well are always balanced, but not all balanced wines can age, correct?...

Few, if any, moments in wine are more dramatic than when a producer decides it is time to pick fruit. Whether they rely upon a Brix reading, a visual cue from the grape seeds, or the finely tuned instrument of their own palate, making the call to harvest a plot of grapes is a decision fraught with...

The WSG is delighted to announce our support for The Golden Vines Diversity Scholarships in association with Liquid Icons and the Gerard Basset Wine Education Charitable Foundation. Liquid Icons, the fine wine research and content production company founded by the late, great Gerard Basset OBE MW...

After several months of dormancy, the first signs of the new vintage begin to show in March (in temperate to warm climates). The fresh pruning wounds begin to “bleed.” This initial sap flow is triggered by rising temperatures. Shortly after the bleeding stops, the buds will begin to swell.

In many ways, wine education relies on face-to-face contact between educators and students. After all, wine is a drink to be shared and which — for centuries — has stimulated conversation among those partaking. So last March, when it became apparent that the global spread of COVID-19 was about to...