Wine Explain

Owning an estate in Bordeaux had been the longtime dream of friends Golan Flam of Flam Winery and Eran Pick of Tzora Vineyards, both winemakers in Israel’s Judean Hills region. After five years of hunting, the partners have purchased Château Tour du Haut-Moulin, a cru bourgeois estate in Bordeaux’s Haut-Médoc region on the Left Bank.

Barrels of Burgundy were up for grabs. Encouraged by last year’s impressive sale, Burgundy’s Domaine des Hospices de Nuits-St.-Georges hosted its 63rd barrel auction March 10 using an online, live streaming format. The charity event raised nearly $2.5 million (€2,281,500) for the medical facility. The overall auction total declined by 36 percent compared with 2023,

Thomas Keller is set to open a new restaurant in Palm Beach, Fla. When is still unclear. What we do know is that it will be located at 221 Worth Ave., the former address of the locally beloved restaurant Ta-boo. Based on documents filed by the property owners, we also know that there are plans

Sergiy Stakhovsky’s post-tennis retirement plan was to focus entirely on his winery in Western Ukraine. The former professional player—whose defeat of Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2013 is considered one of the tennis world’s great upsets—launched Stakhovsky Wines with the 2018 vintage to prove to his countrymen that delicious wine could be made in Ukraine.

Who’s behind it: Orla is the latest Las Vegas restaurant from chef Michael Mina and his Mina Group, the culinary force behind a dozen Wine Spectator Restaurant Award winners, including his Bungalow Kitchen in Tiburon, Calif., Estiatorio Ornos in San Francisco and seven Bourbon Steak locations across the United States. Mina is partnering with the

At Bordeaux’s Château Giscours, the Albada Jelgersma family has finally concluded a long-running, complicated dispute with the heirs of the former owner, who had retained considerable shares in the Margaux estate. Going forward, Giscours will be completely in the hands of the Dutch family. Ownership of a Brand, But A Dispute Over Vineyards When Dutch

Who’s behind it: Located in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, the Riviera Maya Edition at Kanai is the first Caribbean property within the Edition Hotels portfolio (a partnership between hotelier and entrepreneur Ian Schrager and Marriott International). The “lifestyle hotel” group’s restaurants include three Wine Spectator Restaurant Award winners in New York: the Clocktower at the

Piedmont has lost an acclaimed winegrower. Enrico Scavino, 82, the proprietor of the Paolo Scavino winery, died Feb. 25, after apparent complications from surgery. Scavino was one of the “Barolo Boys,” a group of vintners whose vision of Barolo produced with modern techniques shook up the region in the 1990s. Their contemporary interpretations of Piedmont’s

An intruder spilled $2.7 million worth of wine in the cellars of Spain’s Cepa 21, opening the valves on three tanks full of wine from the 2023 vintage. It’s another disturbing example of winery vandalism. Meanwhile, in Washington state, police arrested a suspect accused of striking Sparkman Cellars. Who is believed to be behind the

From his teetotaling childhood home to Opus One’s debut vintage to putting Argentine Malbec on the map, winemaker Paul Hobbs talks about his career-defining moments with candid humor and insightful analysis on the season 2 premiere of Wine Spectator‘s Straight Talk podcast. “I couldn’t think of a better way to kick off our second season

America’s top charity wine event, the Naples Winter Wine Festival (NWWF), has pushed the bar even higher, raising $33 million—its highest total yet—for children’s charities at its annual gathering on the last weekend of January. The event brought together approximately 650 wine lovers in a tent outside the Ritz-Carlton Naples, Tiburón, to compete for lots

The first thing guests would notice at the restaurant Bouley in Manhattan’s Tribeca was a wall of fragrant apples in the entryway. Whereas other restaurants might display dry aging sides of beef or mounds of exotic fish on ice, chef and owner David Bouley, who died Monday at the age of 70 from a heart

Wine Spectator’s annual Grand Tour is known for bringing some of the best wines from around the globe to three top food and wine destinations every year, and 2024 is no different. With two new cities added to the itinerary, over 200 of the world’s best wines will land in New Orleans, Las Vegas and

Who’s behind it: Bellpine is within the newly opened The Ritz-Carlton, Portland, in Portland, Ore. Helming the kitchen is executive chef Pedro Almeida, the chef behind Midori inside the Ritz-Carlton Penha Longa Resort in Sintra, Portugal. There he blends Portuguese cuisine with the traditions of Japanese cooking. Almeida will oversee the Portland hotel’s entire culinary

As the Oregon state legislature is locked in a contentious debate over raising excise taxes on wine and beer to curb excessive alcohol consumption, an Oregon health agency may have withheld a 2021 study that found higher taxes have little impact on getting abusive drinkers to cut back on consumption. The Oregon Health Authority (OHA)

The owners of La Tour d’Argent, the legendary Parisian restaurant and Wine Spectator Grand Award winner, filed a complaint with police last week following an inventory taken of their extensive wine collection. More than 80 bottles, worth $1.63 million (€1.5 million), are missing from the cellar, including bottles from Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. There

Who’s behind it: For years, chef and restaurateur Rick Tramonto impressed Chicagoans and visitors at Tru, which earned a Wine Spectator Grand Award in 2004. Tramonto left in 2010, and the restaurant’s owner, the Lettuce Entertain You hospitality group, closed Tru in 2017. Since 2022, Tramonto, the author of several books and cookbooks, including 2011’s

For the first time in nearly four years, Australian winemakers see signs of hope in their relationship with one of their biggest export markets. The Chinese government is reviewing painful tariffs of well over 100 percent on Australian wine that it implemented in 2020 after a political spat with Australia’s government. If it follows through

What better education could a wine lover ask for than the chance to work and study in Burgundy? The Roots Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping minorities enter the wine industry, is now accepting applications for its “Rooted in France” scholarship, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for ambitious BIPOC graduating college seniors who wish to dive

Perhaps no European wine nation has been hit as hard by climate change this decade as Spain. Last year raised the stakes: January through April of 2023 brought the driest start to a year on the Iberian peninsula since the 1960s, and winemakers across the nation battled to save the vintage. Catalonia and Andalusia were