Word: grapes
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...dating from the 8th or early 9th century. The choicest piece was a two-handled silver chalice, 8 in. high and ornamented with gold filigree and amber studs. With it, the contractor found a matching silver tray, called a paten, and a gilt-bronze ladle with perforations to strain grape pulp from the sacramental wine...
...19th century American engraving entitled The Old Wine God and the New, a graybeard Bacchus passes a vine-wreathed staff to a wide-eyed Western stripling. The artist's message: the age-old mysteries and delectations of the grape are flourishing in California soil. It must have evoked a guffaw or two from Victorian clubmen with noses deep in the real stuff from...
Indeed, Americans' new love affair with the grape may be one of the few recorded instances of the consumer leading the industry. More than a million Americans are enrolled in wine appreciation courses; some 160,000 students at 620 college campuses are taking classes in oenology. The meticulous annual "barrel" tasting of new California vintages held by Manhattan's splendid Four Seasons restaurant has become a spectacular. Last winter's event drew requests from more than 2,000 would-be sippers for the 200 available tickets-at $75 each. Some 50,000 oenophiles have taken part...
California is by no means the vinous El Dorado pictured by its publicists or by many writers who would not know a Chardonnay grape from a supermarket Thompson Seedless. Americans using the Pinot Noir grape of Burgundy have yet to make a red wine that is remotely equal to its ancestor in body and authority. Many California wines, particularly the often overpraised Zinfandels, lack finesse and balance. Some, like Heitz Martha...
...some of which are sold under the label Le Fleuron at a sensible price (around $5.75). In another of its several microclimates, at Yountville, Phelps grows Gewurztraminer, whose sweetish, slightly musky flavor is comparable to the famed white from its ancestral vines in Alsace and Germany. Says Schug: "The grape comes first. We don't aim for a certain market. If you make fine wine, there are always people who will...