Katarina's Blog

Was there an "aha!" experience that changed your perspective about wine? One that drove you to expand your interest in and enjoyment of wine? West Wines Tasting Room Manager, Dave Wertzberger, goes back in time to share his "aha!" experience.

Chile is the wine country that can brag about rediscovering the Bordeaux grape Carménère. I visited wineries there in January and got a very warm welcome and a cool story. After the phylloxera bug killed off a lot of the vineyards in Europe in the late 19th century the Carménère grape was not replanted in Bordeaux since it was already hard to get to flower and ripen in the cool and humid Atlantic climate. It was thought to be mostly extinct when it was rediscovered in 1994 in Chile. The warm and dry climate in the middle of Chile has proven ideal for this grape and beautiful wines are produced now that the varietal is allowed to ripen to its potential. Read on for more on this story and some winery reviews.

There are wineries in so many different parts of the world today. Winemakers experiment with growing vines in places where the climate is quite different from that of Southern and Western Europe. One such place that I visited recently is in Myanmar, on the hillside sloping down towards Inle Lake in the south of Shan state.