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It was a post from Véronique Drouhin on Instagram that caught my eye - rows of vines lit by candles - and for a moment it stopped me, because we’ve seen it before, and we know what it means. Burgundy had entered frost season again. From there, the picture filled in quickly, not through formal reporting at first, but through the growers themselves: more posts, more vineyards lit through the night, then a post from Domaine Lamy showing the same scene, a darkened vineyard alit w

I still remember my first taste of Tokaji - it stopped me in my tracks. The orange peel, five spice, honeyed concentration, and exhilarating acidity that made my mind think of razor-sharp glaciers thrilled me to my core. It was not sweetness that captivated me; it was tension, the kind that makes you sit up straighter, recalibrate your palate, and recognize you are in the presence of something structurally profound. In March, as winter begins to loosen its grip and the first

Recently, I was inspired by a fascinating argument made by an Impressionist art exhibit: that this artistic movement helped shape France’s identity as the global culinary capital. The beautifully captured moments of food, inn workers, farmers, haystacks, markets, and cultivated landscapes helped romanticize what we now think of as the farm-to-table movement. As I moved through the rooms, I immediately felt that it also helped to inspire the idea of terroir in the wine world -

As the calendar page turns to 2026, we are looking at a wine world completely altered by a tasting that took place 50 years ago this year – the Judgment of Paris. In 1976, this low-key wine tasting in a Paris hotel upended the global wine hierarchy. Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant based in Paris, had the idea to pit top French wines against a handful of California upstarts. No one expected the Californians to win – not Spurrier, not the French judges, not even the Ca

By Jerry Kolins, MD, DipWEST, Certified Sommelier In a previous blog I confessed that the skill set needed to successfully complete a medical education and obtain the degree cannot match the expectations of the Court of Master Sommeliers (CMS). https://www.vinesociety.com/post/on-wine-medicine-and-the-obsession-with-grape-growing It is now time to share my experience in trying to enroll in a three-day course intended to provide further education and training needed to advance