5 Frequently Overlooked Facts about German Wine
Students preparing for WSET or CSW examinations should be able to decipher a German wine label and understand the nuances separating “table” wines from “quality” wines.
Wine Facts
Figuring Out Fizz
We may be living in the golden age of sparkling wine. Never before has so much quality “fizz” been available to the wine consumer. San Francisco Chronicle wine writer Jon Bonné prognosticates in his January 10 column that 2014 will be the year during which sparkling becomes as much a part of everyday drinking as …
Four distinct soil types behind some of the world’s greatest wines.
4 Soils Behind the Wines You Love Terroir is an almost mystical French word. English has loose equivalents for it. Its most basic meaning is that wine is primarily the product of climate, soil and environment. A great misconception about soil is that it is always a primary agent of a wine’s flavor, meaning that …
Four distinct soil types behind some of the world’s greatest wines. Read More »
Is There a Wine for Every Food?
Is There a Wine for Every Food? All wine professionals, even those whose careers do not focus on the restaurant, need to know the fundamentals of food and wine pairing. Enrolling in the Napa Valley Wine Academy’s WSET Levels 1, 2 or 3 courses will give you an increasing understanding of how wine and food …
How to Prune Grape Vines
Alex Moeller from the Oregon Wine Research Institute at Oregon State University gives a short lesson on best practices for pruning wine grape vines in the vineyard.
9 Steps to Becoming a Better Wine Taster
Here are your 9 Steps to Becoming a Better Wine Taster 1 – One sip is rarely enough. Our ability to perceive nuances of flavor and levels of acidity in wine, among other components, owes much to our condition while tasting. Is it your first wine of the day? Are you fatigued or sick? Did …
What Really Makes a Wine Good (or Even Great)?
One of the goals of the Napa Valley Wine Academy is to train students to assess a wine’s quality in a way that does not dismiss the hedonistic factor but empowers them to hold it at arm’s length.
On Minerality in Wine
A frequently cited, but just as frequently misunderstood characteristic in many wines, “minerality” belongs in every Napa Valley Wine Academy student’s sensory repertoire.
Minerality is an umbrella category encompassing such aroma and flavor descriptors as wet rock or stone, chalk, flint, crushed gravel and slate, among others.
