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Stories

Origins, grapes, and producers, small stories beyond the glass.

Illustration of amber orange wine with white grapes, a qvevri, grilled fish, and mushrooms

Stories · Orange Wine · Japanese Food

What Is Orange Wine? A Guide to Taste, Pairing, and Choosing Your First Bottle

Orange wine contains no oranges. Learn how skin-contact white wine is made, why it can taste tannic, how it pairs with Japanese food, and how to choose a first bottle.

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A person storing a wine bottle in a wine cooler beside bottles resting on a wooden rack

Stories · Wine Storage · Basics

How to Store Wine: Temperature, Light, and Position Before and After Opening

The advice to keep red wine at room temperature does not tell the whole story after opening. Learn how to store wine before and after opening at home.

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Colored-pencil illustration of a small grower holding grapes and a slightly cloudy glass of wine

Stories · Natural wine

What is natural wine? How it differs from organic, how it tastes, and how to choose

Natural wine brings healthy grapes and a place to the glass with as little added intervention as possible. It is not the same as an organic label or a no-sulfite claim. How you buy and store it decides whether the bottle arrives intact.

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Storybook illustration of a monk with a wine cup, framed by an Athenian symposium, a Burgundy vineyard, and an opera toast

Stories · Symposium · Music

Why do people sing while drinking?

Singing while drinking is not reason’s defeat. In Athens wine unlocked speech and music; after empire fell, a Burgundy monk kept vines and chant alive. That promise reaches today’s glass.

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Michelangelo holding an open book with an Istrian amphora and a modern bottle, Adriatic sails and painter’s tools behind him

Stories · Croatia · Malvasia

Why did the master of the Sistine ceiling seek white from across the sea, not Tuscany?

Indifferent to food, Michelangelo cared about the quality of wine that restored him. The premium whites of Florence and Rome often came across the Adriatic via Venice. That line lives on as Istarska Malvazija.

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Queen Tamar ladling red wine from a qvevri in a cave marani, with buried jars and an ancient book nearby

Stories · Georgia · Qvevri

Why did Queen Tamar bury 185 wine jars in a cliff cave?

As Seljuk armies pressed from the south, George III and Queen Tamar carved Vardzia into the cliff, a cave city with 185 qvevri in its marani, wine as sacred sustenance under siege. Barefoot at prayer, then victory at Shamkor in 1195.

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Alexander the Great in armor raising a golden cup, with soldiers feasting and Dionysus amphorae under a moonlit vineyard

Stories · Ancient Greece · Macedon

Why did Alexander the Great keep drinking undiluted wine?

Fourth-century Athens diluted wine to stay civil. Macedon drank it straight, akratos as proof of manhood. Alexander’s cup carried Dionysus, the murder of Cleitus, and a contest that killed forty-one men before he died at thirty-two.

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An 18th-century merchant with a bottle of Canary Malvasia, ledger and notes, a Canary Islands map, and a Tenerife shipping crate

Stories · Canary Islands · American Revolution

Why was the American Revolution fought with wine, not gold?

When Continental paper money collapsed, Canary Malvasia crossed the Atlantic as liquid currency, smuggled past the blockade to buy guns, powder, and blankets.

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