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2 weeks ago | 
wineenthusiast.com | Christina Pickard
The Loire Valley is a complete mix. Every style of wine can be found along its 600-mile length. The best known Loire Valley wine regions are Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé: the models for Sauvignon Blanc around the world. And the Chenin Blanc of the central Loire — the sweet wines of Vouvray and Anjou — have a poise and acidity which allows them to age for decades, yet be fresh when young. The dry Chenins of Savennières are the purest expression of their granite soil to be found anywhere.
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2 weeks ago | 
wineenthusiast.com | Christina Pickard
For many American wine lovers, all roads lead to Napa Valley. The beating heart of wine production in the United States, Napa has, in the span of five decades, transformed from a sleepy rural town in Northern California into one of the planet’s most luxurious wine destinations, raking in $2.5 billion from 3.7 million visitors annually. Arguably, no other region in the wine world has premiumized wine tourism as much as Napa.
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2 weeks ago | 
wineenthusiast.com | Christina Pickard
Stretching 250 miles south from the San Francisco Bay to Santa Barbara County is the Central Coast Wine Region, a coastal sprawl responsible for about 15% of California’s total wine production. In the northern parts of the Central Coast, Chardonnay tends to dominate the plantings, with Pinot Noir, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon also playing significant roles.
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1 month ago | 
wineenthusiast.com | Christina Pickard
For a nation roughly the size of Colorado, New Zealand produces an outsized amount of wine. Around 105,000 acres are devoted to wine production. On the North and South islands, where most of the population lives, grapevines dot the dry riverbeds, valleys, lake edges and rolling hills pocked with limestone boulders. Vineyards span the subtropical Northland region to arid Central Otago, the most southerly commercial wine region in the world.
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1 month ago | 
wineenthusiast.com | Christina Pickard
Growing up in the 1980s and ’90s at the edge of the Finger Lakes region, located in the center of New York state, my “terroirs” consisted of the local rod-and-gun club, the speedway and the hole-in-the-wall Chinese takeout on Main Street. There was a wine scene, so I’d heard, but most of the wineries catered to bachelorette crowds—wine slushies-on-tap kind of vibes.
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1 month ago | 
wineenthusiast.com | Christina Pickard
On a recent trip to New Zealand, I sat in the audience at the renowned Pinot Noir NZ conference, listening to a litany of sobering statistics delivered by climate experts and environmental activists. They warned that the planet is in worse shape than we once thought—January 2025 was the warmest January on record. “The world will be brought to its knees,” Damon Gameau, a climate-focused documentary filmmaker, warned a stone-silent crowd.
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2 months ago | 
wineenthusiast.com | Christina Pickard
Adversity breeds innovation, so they say, which is exactly why so many grape varieties grow across New York State. The latest count by the New York Wine and Grape Foundation? 134. Most of the Northeastern state’s wine regions are regulated by bodies of water—including the 11 Finger Lakes, the Hudson River or, in Long Island’s case, the ocean—and experience a short growing season with high disease and pest pressure due to wet, humid summers.
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Mar 5, 2025 | 
bonappetit.com | Christina Pickard
Between 1990 and 2004 the volume of Aussie wine exported to the US exploded, from around 550,000 annual cases to a whopping 20 million, led by “critter” wine brand Yellow Tail and its many cheap and cheerful companions—as well as pricier balls-to-the-wall reds like Mollydooker. The latter were showered with lofty point scores by renowned American critics of the time, who had a penchant for “bigger is better” wine styles that rarely lived up to the hype.
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Feb 6, 2025 | 
daily.sevenfifty.com | Christina Pickard
Portuguese wine is some of the cheapest on the planet. In the United States, which is Portugal’s second-biggest export market, valued at over $100 million, value for money remains the country’s calling card, with some styles selling for as low as $6 stateside. Portugal’s “bang for the buck” reputation has allowed for many big brands to flourish in the U.S. market.
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Feb 4, 2025 | 
wineenthusiast.com | Christina Pickard
The invasive insect is the latest added challenge to growing grapes in the Northeast. It’s not easy to grow wine grapes in America’s Northeast, and it’s not getting any easier. Disease pressure is high and the weather is increasingly erratic, serving up everything from spring frosts to droughtto unprecedented rainfall. While many native insects are beneficial to vineyards, invasives can upset established ecosystems and destroy grapevines.
