Vermouth Past & Present: My latest piece for GuildSomm was a fun and challenging one, exploring an oft overlooked and under appreciated drinks category.
Category: General Knowledge (L3)
Wine Enthusiast Digital Exclusive: Do Dry-Farmed Vines Make Better Wine?
“Liquor is worth fightin’ for, but water is worth dyin’ for.” Such is an old adage Ken Wright, owner and winemaker of Ken Wright Cellars in Carlton, Oregon, remembers from when he first came to the West Coast in the 1970s. “Water was already an issue,” he says. “When the population of an area cannot be supported by the natural annual rainfall, things get serious very quickly.”
DipWSET Theory: Tartrate Stability
First let’s define tartrates. You may have heard them called “wine diamonds.” You can find them on your cork, in the neck of the bottle, and in extreme cases floating in the wine itself (or sunk to the bottom). It’s not bad. It’s just not pretty. Some consumers think it’s a “fault.” It’s not. But to prevent any misconceptions or unhappy conversations, many winemakers will stabilize against them.
What these crystals actually are are deposits of potassium and calcium tartrates. It often happens when a wine (that hasn’t been stabilized against tartrates) sees a dip in temperature—tartrates are less soluble at cold temperatures.
Hungary for Tokaji
[Information based on WSET Level 3 material]
Really bad title, I know. But the thing is that, for WSET Level 3, we don’t really study Hungary as a wine producing region outside of the Tokaj region and the production of Tokaji. So, that will be the focus of this post. 
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Wine Region Overview: Austria
Don’t forget about Austria! [Note to self]
[Information based on WSET Level 3 material]