Chateau Pichon Lalande shows classic elegance and grace from the Left Bank, while Angélus is more the modern Right Bank style, flaunting its rich, opulent textures.

“You take cow horns and fill them in autumn with cow manure or with ground silica (quartz) in the springtime. You bury them in the soil during winter, the other during summer and take them out again in the spring or autumn accordingly.

I had become a pretentious wine geek; part of me was embarrassed while another part was proud of being able to speak this elite language of wine. Needless to say, my date had been left in the terroir dust.

Vinodelnya Vedernikoff has a good chance to become a standard bearer not only for the region, but for the entire Russian wine industry from varieties like Rkatsiteli, Aligote and Riesling.

Selecting an affordable yet revelatory bottle of wine from the thirty page tomes that now constitute many restaurant wine lists can be an extremely daunting task, especially if you don’t consider yourself particularly wine literate.

Red citrus fruits may dominate one cuvée while a bowl of berries may rule the roost in another. Just within this one category of Champagne, you can cover an entire spectrum of flavors that can take you to the moon and back.

Chocolate and wine have held their place in the romantic acts of all lovers. Chocolate was regarded by the Aztecs as a sacred food, a food of the gods and an aphrodisiac.