Wine Reviews

Bone-Chilling Temperatures Make Great Canadian Reds, Sparklers Canada’s intensely sweet dessert ice wines have won well-deserved kudos over the last decade, but who knew that Ontario produces some first-rate dry whites and reds?

With $250,000 Grape Sorter, Napa Mountain Men Are Big in Valley Driving rain rattled the tin-roofed shed in Napa’s Spring Mountain wine district where I was playing grape picker and cellar rat during harvest. No picking cabernet at Cain Winery that morning. Sunny California was elsewhere.

Wine Auctioneer’s Nose Tracks Wall Street: A. Craig Copetas Anthony Hanson’s nose is a sobering economic indicator.

Italians Pursue ’Lunatic’ Sommeliers, Revive Indigenous Grapes Ceri Smith likes to fantasize about a world without the big three -- chardonnay, merlot, cabernet sauvignon.

Saint-Emilion’s Vaunted 2005s Are Bargains -- Seven Winners It is a good sign when you walk into a tasting and can smell the wines even before you see them.

Tuscany’s Forgotten Vintage, ‘97 Brunello, Returns From Dead I hope you haven’t drunk all the celebrated 1997 brunello di Montalcinos in your cellar, because if you have, you may have made a mistake.

Sauternes Beat Sticky Sweet Rap, Collectible for $600 and Up “We want everyone to look at Sauternes in a new way,” says Berenice Lurton, owner of Chateau Climens, which makes one of Bordeaux’s most dazzling sweet whites.

Late Rothschild Paired Chateau d’Yquem Snow Cone, Blue Cheese The late Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild once told me that whenever he ate Roquefort, he’d stick a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem Sauternes (“and only Yquem!”) in the freezer till ice crystals formed.

Billionaire Frere’s Wine Sale Fetches $1.8 Million for Charity A charity auction of more than 3,000 bottles of Bordeaux and Champagne from the private cellar of Albert Frere, a Belgian billionaire, raised a higher-than- expected 1.1 million pounds ($1.8 million) in London.

Fall Wine Auctions Tap Sinatra’s Bordeaux, ‘21’ Club Cellar A meat skewer slides through a crack in a brick wall to open the creaking secret door of the ‘21’ Club’s Prohibition-era wine cellar. From this historic warren of rooms 640 bottles go on sale tomorrow at Christie’s International Plc in New York.