Khoury is one of a dozen winemakers in the West Bank. It is about 45 miles from Gaza, where war has been waging since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel that left more than 1,200 Israelis and foreigners dead. A May report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs puts the death toll in Gaza at 34,735 Palestinian fatalities.

Khoury and other winemakers have struggled to keep their businesses afloat in the aftermath.

Most wineries in Israel and Palestine were in mid-harvest when the attacks and counterstrikes began. Many harvest workers were called to military service, leaving grapes to rot.

“Can Palestine produce quality wine, even in these difficult circumstances?” Khoury asks. “I say, ‘yes.’ Most Palestinians will say ‘no.’ I am testing that on myself.”

Though Khoury lost his olive harvest last fall, he was one of the few winemakers in the area who completed his 2023 grape harvest. It happened mostly by chance.

Because he wanted to celebrate his father’s birthday on October 7—the day of the deadly attack—Khoury decided to pick his grapes on October 6.

There’s no telling if harvest will be possible this year or if it’s top of mind for locals, but Khoury hopes it will be permitted.

“Wine is taboo for the majority of the population here. [Winemakers] are not considered important,” Khoury says. “So, you start to question yourself—does this matter? Is it superficial?”

Why It Does Matter

Formerly an architect in Paris, Khoury is a poet at heart. Philokalia translates to “love of the beautiful, the good” and Khoury says he’s on a mission to find beauty through his wines.

Like any winemaker, his pursuit begins with terroir. It’s a popular word, “terroir,” which often gets muddled. At its core, terroir is the soil—a grounding source of place and history in a wine—giving it an identity. Where Khoury lives, terroir, identity and a sense of normalcy are precious commodities.

Khoury’s vines, the oldest of which are 110 years old, have both experienced hardship and healed over the years. He says they were crushed under boulders by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to make settlements and roads in the early 2000s and again in 2021. Despite the work, some of the vines grew around the boulders, enabling him to produce his first vintage in 2015.

“If you stick to it, you learn to find beauty in suffering,” Khoury says. “It becomes a guiding star and a source of hope. For me, the wine has to rise above the suffering.”

The winery sits about 3,000 feet above sea level, with the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the Dead Sea to the east, offering a large diurnal shift in temperatures. The well-drained soil is a mixture of clay and limestone. Khoury’s production is small, with 10,000 bottles total, a thousand of them dedicated to arak, a fragrant liqueur made from fermented grapes and aniseed. The vineyard is dry-farmed with no tilling, and the wines are made with minimal intervention, fining and filtering.

Among Philokalia Wines’ offerings is the 2022 Stubborn Saints, a chillable red with a pale ruby color and notes of wild strawberries, roses, hard candy, watermelon and herbs. Its low alcohol and light body make it an elegant summer sipper.

There’s also the 2021 Grapes of Wrath (a cult favorite among many wine lovers), an amber wine made with a blend of indigenous grapes aged in amphorae. With notes of honey, orange pith, honeysuckle, dried apricot, herbs and a distinct aroma of golden raisins warmed in ghee, this wine has a long finish and balanced structure.

Also in the mix: the 2021 Anima Syriana, the boldest of the lineup, with a medium ruby color, velvety mouthfeel and notes of blackberries, blueberries, bramble and maraschino cherries.

All are dry and benefit from decanting. The grapes are not revealed on the bottles, which contain a blend of old-vine native varieties. Khoury’s reasoning for keeping the grapes unknown is that he believes not enough research and wine history exists for the vinifera of his region. Until there is adequate literature on the grapes, Khoury believes in safeguarding the varietals to prevent them from being exploited for their exoticness.

“While the rest of the world enjoys sharing its viticultural heritage, I don’t know of anyone having theirs stolen so blatantly,” Khoury says.

Limited Supply and Increasing Demand

Though local wine consumption has declined substantially because of the war, with domestic sales plummeting over 60%, according to the Israeli Wine Producers Association (IWPA), demand for Middle Eastern wines has increased in the U.S.

Zachary Engel, the executive chef and owner of Galit, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Chicago, says people have become increasingly curious about wines from the region.

“The demand for a lot of our wines, specifically through Palestine and Lebanon, was a lot higher this year,” Engle says. “It seemed like people were not paying attention or really interested in a lot of these wines until the war started. I think that people were like, what can we do to be in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza? And I think that's a really nice sentiment.”

Engel is Jewish, and his business partner and wine list curator, Andrés Clavero, is part-Palestinian. Together, they have built a regionally-inspired menu of foods and wines from both Israel and Palestine, including Philokalia Wines’ Grapes of Wrath, Stubborn Saints and Red Bethlehem.

Those bottles are also on the list at Albi in Washington D.C., another Michelin-starred restaurant, and on retail shelves in Michigan, California, New York, Chicago and other U.S. cities.

“We’re seeing a boom,” says wine importer and distributor Jason Bajalia of Terra Sancta Trading Company. “Some of it is for fundraisers, for Gaza charity dinners. But that won’t exist once the war is over. At the same time, thousands of new people are being exposed to [Palestinian] wine.”

War may be a commoditizing factor in the popularization of wines from the region in the U.S., though Khoury and Bajalia both believe the wines can stand on their own accord, pointing to their quality and unique history. Case in point, Philokalia’s 2021 Grapes of Wrath won a gold medal at the San Francisco International Wine Competition in 2023.

The Future of Palestinian Wine

“Circumstances are what I’ve been given in life, so I deal with it,” Khoury says. “What happens tomorrow when things get back to a more normal?”

For now, Khoury is unsure when he can work on his vines. He will attempt to do so in the coming weeks, to check for mold and other diseases. If there is a military action in the area, he will be forced to retreat and let the grapes take their own course. But Khoury is cautiously realistic about this year’s harvest.

“I’m interested to produce one of the finest wines in the world but it’s a long-term game,” Khoury says. “We have to go one day at a time, really. We don’t know.”

Our War Zone Coverage

• In war-torn Ukraine, nightlife offers a fleeting escape, according to reporter Adam Robb. He spends a night out in Lviv, describing drinking gin and tonics to air raid sirens and more.
• Want to know more? Listen to Robb's update on our podcast, after a trip back to a bar show in Kyiv. He tells us about seeing a "level of empathy that no human being is normally pushed to experience.”
• In "Winemaking Tradition in Israel Runs Deep," Mike DeSimone offers a primer on the region's history and terroir.
• Learn how Winemaker Eddie Chami is changing the conversation around Lebanese wine culture, away from war.

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The post Making Fine Wine in Palestine, Despite It All appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.

“Cannabis is very nuanced and complicated,” says Derek Gilman, managing director of Ganjier. The Ganjier program, in short, is the weed world’s answer to the sommelier—industry experts who’ve gone through training to guide consumers in finding the right herb for them.

“The inspiration behind creating and developing the systematic assessment protocol (SAP) comes from different epicurean-based industries,” explains Gilman, pointing toward the Court of Master Sommeliers, the Ciceron Certification Program and, of course, the Wine & Spirits Education Trust (WSET). “We looked at these programs and tried to find where the similarities are in cannabis.”

You May Also Like: A Guide To Wine Certification Programs

The SAP scale assesses appearance, aroma, flavor and experience in order to determine the quality of cannabis and is specific to inhalables—whether flower or concentrates.

It’s the “experience” portion that greatly differs from any kind of wine assessment. “We break up the experience between mental and physical,” explains Gilman. “Within those two areas we break it down further to identify if the experience was stimulating, relaxing or balanced between the two. Or was there some kind of negative effect? For example, anxiety, headaches or sore throat.” Beyond mental and physical, Ganjiers also assess onset—how long does it take before one begins to feel those effects—as well as the intensity and longevity of those effects.

The Ganjiers doing the scoring are folks who have gone through the education system—in which the final exam does, indeed, include a “tasting portion.” Importantly, they all assess products in their local markets, since shipping cannabis across state lines is still not allowed.

In terms of final scores, they range much like Wine Enthusiast’s very own 100-point scale—the closer to 100, the higher the recommendation from the industry pros. Anything below a 75 is “not recommended.” Scores can be accessed via an app and, Gilman says, are frequently utilized by Ganjiers in all sectors of the weed industry—from retail to distribution and even the farmers themselves to see how their crop fares amongst the growing competition.

You May Also Like: What a Professional Reviewer Really Thinks of Cannabis Beverages

Next in the works: “There’s a potential for vintages with cannabis concentrates, traditional hashish,” says Gilman, explaining that, over time, the expression of cannabis flower can actually evolve—sometimes for the better. “This is an area that’s gaining more traction.” And for Californians, the Department of Food and Agriculture is now looking into the effects of terroir and appellation on different flowers. So, your next roll might just have the equivalent of an AVA designation on the package.

This article originally appeared in the June/July 2024 of Wine Enthusiast magazine. Click here to subscribe today!

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The archetype of the pretentious, joyless wine aficionado may flash on our screens for a few moments as a throwaway joke or atmospheric detail. Such was the case with the new Netflix series The Gentlemen, when a mysterious millionaire insists upon having his $40,000-a-bottle wine cartoonishly double decanted (a method experts told us “isn’t necessary at all”).

Or the wine snob might take a more central narrative role. Consider the 2004 film Sideways, which follows Paul Giamatti’s oenophile character, Miles, on a roadtrip through Santa Ynez Valley wine country as he incessantly denigrates Merlot.

“If anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving,” he says—a sentiment that, following the film’s success, impacted actual Merlot sales in the United States. And yet for all the wine knowledge Miles flaunts, and despite his real-world impact on wine trends, he is not an aspirational figure.

“Sometimes it feels like the more someone is an expert in wine, the less we like them,” says Devin Parr, founder of The Vinter Project.

Ironically, Miles is less of a connoisseur than his strong opinions may have led viewers to believe. The 1961 Chateau Cheval Blanc from St. Emilion that Miles had been saving for a special occasion and wound up drinking at a fast food restaurant is, in fact, a Merlot blend—making him not just insufferable, but also a hypocrite.

As a creative device, the wine-snob archetype is reliable comedically, because it exposes the pretension—and, at times, emptiness—of an industry that many people feel excludes them. Characters portrayed as wine snobs are often vaguely villainous, while people who appreciate beer or cocktails seem approachable and fun.

“Think about the oenophiles in the media,” says Mike Ringland, a Philadelphia-based sommelier. “Hannibal Lecter loved a nice Chianti. Christian Grey loved a Pouilly-Fumé. These are all characters that, while brilliant or successful, are portrayed [in] a certain unhinged way. It’s as though if you’re deeply into wine, you’re smart, but in a psychotic way.”

Ringland points out that James Bond’s love of martinis only makes him cooler. What’s the big difference?

“James Bond would never order white Burgundy by producer or village or cru,” he says. “Doing so wouldn’t make him seem sleek and cool—he would be perceived as stuffy and nerdy.”

Wine became “stuffy,” Ringland suspects, in part because of all the formalities associated with wine service that, while beneficial for a guest (presenting the bottle, inquiring about decanting preferences and temperature), it makes “people’s eyes start rolling, as if it’s a big joke.”
“The perception of drinking wine to American consumers often carries this irony: ‘Oh look, I’m being fancy!’” Ringland says.

He often recalls a scene from the 1990 film Opportunity Knocks, in which Dana Carvey, a con man pretending to be a sommelier, is at dinner and a stuffy French waiter presents him with the wine menu. Carvey’s character selects a wine, and the waiter leans in and says, “Excuse me, but that is the address of the wine distributor.” The French waiter is seen as uptight for knowing about wine, and Carvey is the relatable common man for thinking it’s all nonsense.

Many wine professionals, however, feel that the caricature of wine lovers reinforces the exclusion that many regular wine-drinkers feel. These are people who can’t afford the Central Coast wine road trip or the $40,000 bottle, or who fear making a wine-ordering faux pas at a fancy restaurant.

For his part, Ringland feels his job is most important when he’s helping people on a budget find the perfect wine for their meal: “Out of a 1500-bottle selection list, I know exactly what $62 bottle you’ll never forget.” But his approach to engaging with consumers hasn’t always been the norm.

“For decades, many—but not all—wine professionals have approached guests with the same boilerplate, high-level wine dialogue that usually lacks meaning to the average consumer, alienating them in the process,” says Sam Bogue, beverage director at Flour + Water Hospitality Group. “There are some incredibly talented wine professionals who have perfected the craft of adapting the language they use in each setting to more warmly incorporate their guests into the conversation, but for a long time, this has been the outlier.”

And that’s what makes the caricature so entertaining—it flips the power dynamic, mocking the type of expert that makes more casual wine drinkers feel inadequate. “The trope has become so ubiquitous in our pop culture because many people will have interacted with this exact style of behavior at some point in their lives,” says Bogue.

Interestingly, the wine snob stereotype may disincentivize people from learning more about wine.

“Unfortunately, the fear of being obnoxious can stop anyone from trying to learn or talk about wine,” says Bernadette James, the in-house sommelier at Stages at One Washington and The Living Room in Dover, New Hampshire. “What actually makes a wine snob is intention. A wine lover simply enjoys talking about wine, while a wine snob loves proving how much they think they know about wine.”

Set on a girls trip to Napa Valley, the 2019 film Wine Country offered a refreshing, often joyful break from the cinematic tradition of conflating wine lovers with wine snobs. At a tasting on a Napa vineyard, where a friend group of middle-aged women are celebrating a 40th birthday, a male employee tries to tell them which notes they should be picking up on, and a character says flatly, “I don’t wanna learn about wine on this trip.”

Of course, that’s another extreme—committing to ignorance—but the depiction at least gets closer to what people actually love about wine: being with friends, enjoying the taste, having a joyful experience.

“The world of wine can be so unapproachable, that we’ve forgotten what wine is actually about: connection and pleasure,” says James. “If we can all approach wine with intention, with pleasure, with humanity, then wine snobs and the fear of being one disappear."

Bogue sees the prevalence of the wine snob shrinking, in part due to wine tech, which has allowed “for more democratization of wine notes and the tasting process.”

The natural wine movement has also had an impact. “It seemed to be in direct opposition to wine snobbery when it first started to invade the wine zeitgeist of America back in the 2010s,” he says. “Natural wine presented itself as playful, more affordable and less tied to tradition, meaning you didn't need to know a ton to break into it. Ultimately, it's fun style made it less ‘fussy.’”

Few things, however, can stay unfussy forever. The natural wine snob has since garnered a reputation for intimidating casual drinkers with their insistence on the supremacy of “barnyard” wines.

“It does seem that we've come full circle,” says Bogues. “Natural wine can feel just as pretentious—if not more—as conventional wine. So the cycle continues.”

Our Coverage of Wine Snobs

• In "‘The Gentlemen’ Features an Unusual Decanting Method. Is It Any Good?" contributor Maria Yagoda examines whether double-decanting fine Burgundy holds up.
• Is natural wine exclusionary? Some industry pros want to expand the meaning.
• If you want to avoid coming across as a wine snob, avoid these red flags.
• Wine is frequently used throughout HBO’s Succession, not only to signal power, but to skewer characters. Tom Wambsgans is basically a walking wine metaphor.

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The post Why Everyone Loves to Laugh at the ‘Wine Snob’ Archetype of Film and TV appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.

“How often do you get to see wine regions and the whole economic engine of an industry happen right before your very eyes?” asks T. Scott Stephens, a sommelier and co-owner of Beckett’s Table, in Phoenix. He’s served fine wine for his whole career, but only became wise to Arizona wine a little over a decade ago after drinking wines from Sand Reckoner Vineyards made by co-owners Rob Hammelman and Sarah Fox.  

“If this quality of wine is being made by this lovely couple, who else is doing it?” thought Stephens, who now sells a significant share of Arizona wine. “It created this journey that continues to today.” 

Arizona’s accelerated evolution is due to a unique combination of factors. There’s the rockstar attention brought by Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan, who started his Arizona brand Caduceus nearly 20 years ago. Then came the rise of an educational backbone at Yavapai College’s Southwest Wine Center, which is pumping out expertly trained winemakers every year.  

Underlying the entire Arizona wine culture, too, is a proud spirit of experimentation. It continues to empower winemakers to explore—and rather quickly determine—which grapes are truly suited to the state’s stark landscapes. 

“We have an opportunity to tell a new story,” says Pavle Milic, who opened Scottsdale’s FnB Restaurant nearly 15 years ago and more recently launched Los Milics Vineyards. “What’s liberating is that we don’t have to follow any trends or any rules.”   

The state is broken up into three American Viticultural Areas (AVAs), and these appellations also serve as the primary places to taste wine in Arizona. The historic heart of Arizona wine is just south of Tucson in the Sonoita AVA, which sits at nearly 5,000 feet in elevation and is between four mountain ranges.  

Over an hour to the northeast is the Willcox AVA, where most of Arizona’s grapes grow on a high plain at about 4,000 feet. Then a two-hour drive north of Phoenix is the Verde Valley, where more than two dozen tasting rooms continue to toast the AVA’s 2021 approval.   

What follows are suggestions on which tasting rooms and estate wineries to visit in each of these regions. You can’t go wrong with any of them since they all offer uniquely personal service.  

“You still experience the human side of winemaking in Arizona,” says Milic. “You actually get the chance to meet the people involved in the craft, not just people working in the tasting room. Arizona is still young enough that that experience is still possible.” 

Sonoita

Sonoita is the historic heart of Arizona wine. Soil expert Gordon Dutt, who came to Arizona from U.C. Davis in the 1970s, encouraged the state’s first commercial vineyards to be planted on the region’s windswept grasslands.  

In 1984, Sonoita became one of the earliest approved AVAs in the United States—just three years after Napa Valley, which was the first. With elevations around 5,000 feet, it’s one of the higher appellations in the country, framed by the peaks of the Santa Rita, Huachuca and Whetstone mountains. 

Callaghan Vineyards 

Kent Callaghan is considered the pioneer of modern Arizona winemaking, having first planted vines with his parents near the town of Elgin in 1990. Callaghan Vineyards has since been served in the White House four separate times.  

“Though not classically trained, this gentleman has been making wines through trial and error and now has over 30 vintages under his belt,” says FnB Restaurant’s Pavle Milic. “No one has a better perspective on the lay of the land of Arizona wine.” 

Milic loves the white blend called Lisa’s, which usually includes Marsanne, Roussanne and Malvasia Bianca. “It’s an aromatic empress,” says Milic. “Every time I smell this wine, it reminds me of Arizona.”

For a red, try a bottle of Waverley’s, a blend of Grenache and Petit Manseng, a white grape. “He uses Petit Manseng in the same way we would add a little salt and lemon to soup, to give it a little lift,” says Milic. “It amplifies the mouthfeel.” 

Rune Wines 

This off-the-grid winery is the work of Arizona native James Callahan, who made wine in Washington State, New Zealand and California before returning home in 2012 to launch Rune Wines the following year.  

“This is one of our favorite places to visit,” says Emily Rieve and Lindsey Schoenemann, who own GenuWine Arizona, a wine bar and bottle shop in Phoenix. “The atmosphere is breathtaking, especially with the tasting room overlooking the vineyards. What makes it especially memorable is the owner/winemaker James and his wife, Anna—they are the heart and soul of Rune. The wines are exceptional and if you're lucky, James will take one out of his library to pour.” 

Stephens is also a fan. “It’s among the rewarding sunset views of Sonoita’s undulating vineyards and whispering tall grasses,” he says. “James Callahan’s use of wild yeast fermentation is reflective of taking only what nature gives and letting it blossom in the bottle.” 

Dos Cabezas WineWorks 

Both Stephens and Milic give much credit to Todd and Kelly Bostock of Dos Cabezas for pushing the state’s wine forward. “They have been the driving force of what Arizona wine could be,” says Stephens. 

Milic recommends two sparkling wines—one in a can, the other made in a solera-style—as well as the El Campo Red. “El Campo is a field blend of everything that they planted in the Pronghorn Vineyard, all picked together at the same time,” says Milic, who’s poured the wine at FnB for many years. “It’s special because it reflects this little chunk of land.” 

Plus, there are good eats. “Todd and Kelly imported a wood-burning oven from Italy, so they make badass pizza,” says Milic, adding that they often showcase appetizers made with indigenous ingredients, like tepary bean hummus. “They’re mindful of provenance.” 

Los Milics 

Milic was working the floor of his FnB Restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale when guests asked him to describe his winemaking dream. Then they offered to help fund such a project. So, at the end of 2018, Milic moved to the Sonoita area and began building Los Milics Vineyards. 

Serving 14 wines from 17 different grapes grown on 70 acres of estate vineyards, the tasting room is set amidst what Milic calls a “cavalcade of monoliths” that rise from the desert floor. Nine one-bedroom casitas just opened as an overnight option, and there’s a small restaurant on the way as well.  

“This jewel of southern Arizona encompasses amazing architectural design bound with a passionate respect to nature,” says Stephens. “The vast viewing window looking outside of the tasting room reveals the Mustang Mountains. At every corner, with a glass of Arizona in hand, visitors may feel a calming sense to simply exhale.” 

Queen of Cups 

More winemakers are heading closer to the Mexican border to expand the Sonoita terroir. Among them are Lily Christopher and Emmett Rahn-Oakes, the young couple behind Queen of Cups. Their low-intervention wines are made with grapes including Picpoul Blanc, Barbera, Viognier, Malbec and more. 

“Emmett and Lily are part of the new wave of generational wine makers staking their claim in southern Arizona,” says Stephens. “An easy 20-minute drive from Sonoita lands you in the quaint hamlet of Patagonia, where their convivial respite showcases wines of restraint, balance and minimal intervention.” 

Verde Valley

Even though less than 200 acres of grapes are grown in the appellation, the Verde Valley is jam-packed with tasting rooms in the small towns of Cottonwood, Clarkdale, Jerome and Cornville. That’s due to its proximity to Phoenix, which is about a 90-minute drive away.  

“This area is booming because it’s a quicker and cooler wine getaway for the millions of people in that exploding city,” comment Jeanne and Pete Snell, who own Tucson’s Arizona Wine Collective in Tucson, which has become known as a chamber of commerce for the state’s wines.  

“We have watched it change and, especially, grow over the last seven years. In addition to having had more than 40 wineries featured in our place over the years, we are privy to what the consumers are saying about and being drawn to these days.”   

Caduceus Winery & Merkin Vineyards  

You can’t talk Arizona wine without giving credit to Maynard James Keenan, who achieved fame and fortune as the frontman to the rock bands Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer before founding his winery 20 years ago.  

First based in Jerome—which is still home to a tasting room—his Caduceus Winery and Merkin Vineyards grew into multiple brands and tasting rooms as well as five small Verde Valley vineyards and one big one in the Willcox AVA.  

“He’s done so much taking his bravado and stardom and using it as an absolute facilitator for Arizona wine,” says T. Scott Stephens. “He’s just as giving and sharing as the next guy.” 

Most significantly, Keenan recently opened a brand new, hilltop facility on the former site of the Masonic Lodges in downtown Cottonwood. “It’s an amazing accomplishment and now a must-see destination for food and wine lovers to experience his nod to his Italian heritage,” says Stephens. “The panoramic view via the hilltop tram with a gelato in hand is unforgettable.” 

Southwest Wine Center Tasting Room 

With a 13-acre vineyard and a teaching winery with an emphasis on sustainability, Yavapai College’s Southwest Wine Center, in Clarkdale, offers a two-year degree in enology and viticulture. “They’re churning out winemakers,” says Stephens. 

It’s an interesting place to explore the cutting edge of Arizona wine. “You can taste the efforts of the students,” says Milic. “It gives people the opportunity to see the academic side of it.” 

Chateau Tumbleweed 

Founded in 2011 by two couples who were already working in the Arizona wine industry, Chateau Tumbleweed sources from at least a dozen vineyards across the state each vintage to produce a range of blends and single-vineyard, single-variety wines.  

“They are down-to-earth, great people,” says Rieve from GenuWine Arizona, whose inventory and menu reflects that state’s entire wine culture. “What makes Arizona wines so special are the people behind the wines. The owners and winemakers are so involved every step of the way and are usually running the tasting rooms as well. It just feels like family and we love supporting Arizona wines.” 

She likes Tumbleweed’s Mourvèdre. “The labels are fun and the tasting room feels like you're home,” says Rieve. “It's so welcoming.”  

Milic appreciates how the Tumbleweed team makes wine easy to like for all types of people. “They drop the whole cloak of pedantic vernacular when it comes to tasting,” he said. “They’re approachable. They make it fun. They are people who don’t take themselves that seriously and guests respond to that. They also happen to make delicious wine.” 

Page Springs Cellars 

Ever since planting his first creekside vineyard in 2004 north of Cornville, Eric Glomski made stewardship of the surrounding environment a key component of the mission for Page Springs Cellars, which partners with Friends of the Verde River, among other nonprofits. A visit can simply focus on tasting wine and enjoying food from the on-site bistro, or guests could take a tour of the cellar, the estate, or the nearby House Mountain Vineyard. 

“Eric has carved an indelible path along Oak Creek,” said Stephens. “His wines are nurtured and crafted by hand, expressing a sense of place. You can experience multiple wine tastings inside, or take the adventure outside with a picnic, or nestle up to the deck with the perpetual flow of rippling water below.” 

Willcox 

In 2016, the Willcox AVA became the state’s second appellation, a well-deserved recognition since the region grows about 75% of Arizona’s wine grapes, including much of what’s being poured in Sonoita and Verde Valley. As the Snells of Arizona Wine Collective explained, “Folks are drinking Willcox wine no matter where they taste Arizona wine.” 

The flat, desolate landscape sprawls across a farming area known as the Kansas Settlement. The tasting rooms range from casual estate experiences that are spread out across the landscape to more urbane offerings often found in the small town of Willcox.  

Golden Rule Vineyards 

The Snells recommend Golden Rule Vineyards, which just opened a new tasting room in “a cool historical building in the town of Willcox,” they point out. The winery, which grows 11 varieties on 26 acres at its estate vineyard, is now in what was originally the Chevrolet building, a landmark built in 1946.  

Those wishing to see the vines can schedule an appointment to taste at the estate, which is on the northern end of the Dragoon Mountains. “They also grow some of the best pistachios you’ll ever have,” the Snells say. 

Rhumb Line Vineyard 

As someone who’s walked vineyards all around the world, T. Scott Stephens is always impressed by the meticulous care he witnessed at Rhumb Line, which owners Todd Myers and Michelle Minta named after a nautical term.  

“It’s like you could eat off the floor,” says Stephens, of the property, which also grows olives and lavender. Though Rhumb Line sells all of its fruit, the property offers lodging in Quonset huts and farm-fresh cuisine at the recently opened Olive’s Vineyard Cafe, making it an ideal home base for exploring the nearby tasting rooms of Pillsbury Wine Company & Vineyard and Bodega Pierce.   

Four Tails Vineyards & 1764 Vineyards 

A little further south, but still in the Willcox AVA, is a growing area around the town of Pearce. “The drive out there provides an excellent view of this region on the edge of the Chiricahua National Monument,” says Jeanne Snell, who recommends hiking there.  

“We are getting some outstanding wines from this area from Four Tails Vineyards and 1764 Vineyards,” she says. “Neither have official tasting rooms but host customers by appointment.” 

More Southwest Wine Coverage: 

• Rock Star Maynard James Keenan's latest splashy project aims to amplify Arizona wine. 
• The Southwest is one of the United States’s unsung wine regions. Get to know the landscape in “Exploring the Diverse, Terroir-Driven Wines of the American Southwest.” 
• Texas has one of the fastest-growing wine scenes around. Our editors rounded up the best wineries in Texas to visit. 
• Six new AVAs are on the horizon for Texas, suggesting the possibility of more definition and visibility that, for many Texas winemakers, feels overdue. 
• The Camp Verde Pecan and Wine Festival, which takes place an hour outside of Phoenix, is a food festival that deserves attention from wine lovers. 
  

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A washed-rind cheese is one brushed with brine or alcohol, which fosters the growth of Brevibacterium linens. The bacterium, which is usually also added to the wash, gives these cheeses their signature stink. (Fun fact: It’s the same bacteria responsible for foot odor.) It also delivers sticky red, pink or orange rinds and a gooey interior. But while the aromas and flavor profiles of washed-rind cheeses may be yeasty, sulfuric, meaty or barnyardy, most smell more pungent than they taste.

The process of washing cheese with brine dates to at least the 7th century, when Alsatian monks created Munster, a creamy, notoriously aromatic cow’s milk cheese with a vibrant orange rind. In the Middle Ages, Belgian Trappist monks also began making washed-rind cheeses, often using beer or brandy to bathe the wheels. The tradition of washing cheeses with alcohol has continued over the centuries and remains a popular practice today, particularly in Europe and the U.S.

While washing cheeses was likely an early form of preservation, it also encourages the growth of beneficial microbes while keeping harmful microorganisms at bay. Washing with alcohol instead of brine has the added benefit of imbuing a cheese with flavor and added complexity.

“For our North Fork Whiskey Washed Munster, bathing the cheese with the spirit encourages unique fruity and floral esters to develop on the rind, along with the color enhancement brought on by the specific alcohol,” says Alise Sjostrom, founder and cheesemaker of Redhead Creamery in Brooten, Minnesota. “The whiskey is also local to us, so it provides a sense of central Minnesota terroir and collaboration with a great company.”

Incorporating alcohol into the curds themselves or wrapping booze-soaked leaves around a cheese before aging similarly transfers aromatics and flavor to the final product. But the motivation for doing so may also be practical. That’s the case for cheesemaker Pat Morford of Rivers Edge Chevre in Logsden, Oregon, which has received widespread acclaim for Up in Smoke, a fresh ball of farmstead goat’s milk cheese wrapped in smoked maple leaves that have been spritzed with bourbon.

“While the spirit does add some flavor and fragrance, it’s mostly to make the leaves pliable,” says Morford.

Of course, the best way to learn about booze-soaked cheese is to eat them. The following cheeses are some of America’s finest alcohol-washed offerings, all available to be shipped to your door.

Beer-Washed Cheese

While Chimay is perhaps the planet’s best-known beer-washed cheese (from the abbey and brewery in Chimay, Belgium), many American cheesemakers have adopted the practice.

Alemar Cheese Company in Mankato, Minnesota, produces Good Thunder, a squidgy adaptation of Reblochon (an AOC cow’s milk cheese from the French Alps), made from 100%-grassfed pasteurized cow’s milk. After the cheese is washed in Nacht Rider Schwarzbier from Minneapolis’s Arbeiter Brewing Company, it’s aged for six to eight weeks. The resulting russet-hued square is rich and gooey, with a bold, meaty umami profile.

Missouri’s Baetje Farms does its own version of Reblochon, using pasteurized milk from their herd of goats as well as that of nearby farms. Washed Vallée is brushed with Whiskey Barrel Stout from Kansas City, Missouri’s Boulevard Brewing Co, yielding a semi-soft cheese with tantalizing notes of bacon and sweet cream with a hint of caramelized onion.

Cider-Washed Cheese

New York City’s Murray’s Cheese has acted as affineur for dozens of cheesemakers over the past 20 years, aging some of the nation’s most formidable collaborations in the shop’s four on-site caves. (The shop offers a cave-themed class, and for the more ambitious, a cave intern program.)

Greensward, from Vermont’s Jasper Hill Farm, is but one notable example. Inspired by Switzerland’s AOC Vacherin Mont d’Or, this cow’s milk beauty is washed with Michigan’s Virtue Cider, wrapped in spruce bark and aged for six weeks. Greensward’s luscious, satiny paste is redolent of bacon, browned onions and a whiff of the Vermont woods.

Less hedonistic but no less enjoyable is Hop Along from Northern California’s venerable Cowgirl Creamery. Made from pasteurized organic cow’s milk washed with French cider, this appealing semi-firm snacker is aged for 45 days, yielding aromas of apples and freshly baked bread. (Cowgirl Creamery sells it as part of its California Coast collection, but you can also order a five-pound block from FoodServiceDirect. Local shops near you may also carry it.)

Wine-Washed Cheese

Pairing cheese with wine might be a no-brainer, but some cheesemakers also use fermented grape juice or pomace to wash their wheels.

Affineur Sergio Moro of Veneto’s Latteria and Caseficio Moro makes Ubriaco al Prosecco, a semi-firm cow’s milk cheese that spends two months immersed in Prosecco before aging for at least six months. Creamy, floral and delicate, each bite is imbued with the essence of golden apple and pear.

Meanwhile, Rogue Creamery, out of Central Point, Oregon, soaks its award-winning Bluehorn Blue in biodynamic Syrah from nearby Troon Vineyard, lending each cave-aged wheel vibrant berry and plum notes, plus a rosy hue.

Whiskey-Washed Cheese

Sjostrom’s riff on traditional French Munster (not to be confused with American Muenster, a processed semi-soft cheese) is North Fork Whiskey-Washed Munster, a dense little cylinder made with cow’s milk from her family’s dairy. After washing the cheese with Minnesota 14 Whiskey from nearby Panther Distillery, Sjostrom ages each batch for eight weeks to develop a delectable creamy paste with a hint of toasted oak and salami.

For a delightful upgrade on fresh goat cheese, try the previously mentioned Up in Smoke. Morford was inspired to create a product that was representative of both and her farm. She smokes maple leaves gathered from the property with alder chips (also collected on-site) and sprays the leaves with bourbon before wrapping each subtly smoky, tangy ball of cheese.

Brandy-Washed Cheese

Rogue River Blue is another highly decorated cow’s milk cheese from Rogue Creamery; each wheel is wrapped in biodynamically grown Syrah leaves from Troon Vineyard that have been soaked in pear brandy from Oregon’s Clear Creek Distillery. The cheese is aged from nine to 11 months and released on the autumnal equinox. It’s a dense, fudgy wheel with notes of umami, spice, caramel, vanilla and fig. It’s certainly one of the world’s great cheeses, improved only by a glass of Port or an earthy Syrah.

If you’re seeking something truly stinky, Époisses (Ay-PWOSS), with its buttery, oozy paste and tacky orange rind, is one of the most glorious cheeses to come out of France. This PDO pasteurized cow’s milk offering from Burgundy is washed with locally made Marc de Bourgogne and aged for a minimum of six weeks before being packaged in its signature wooden box. The traditional way to eat Époisses is to cut a hole in the top of the cheese and spoon out the runny ivory paste.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of washed-rind cheeses from all over the world and cheesemakers are always innovating—experimenting with everything from sake and absinthe to rice whiskey. We suggest nabbing a slice whenever you see one; just be mindful to limit tastings or cheeseboards to three or four selections to avoid palate fatigue. But the best way to discover new favorites? Don’t fear the funk.

More Stories About Cheese

• Wine can be infused into cheese in a variety of ways, from marinades to infusions. Sara Pepitone examines wine cheese and how it pairs with wine.
• What are the top cheese shops in America? Writer-at-Large Emily Saladino highlights the most iconic.
• Celebrate the U.S.A. with these all-American cheese and wine pairings laid out by Hannah Howard.
• Lastly, present those cheese like a pro with this guide to building the perfect cheese board.

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The post Delightfully Funky, Booze-Washed Cheese Is Our New Obsession appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.

Heads across the globe turned. Two Oregon wineries sat up and acted.

On January 18, Sokol Blosser Winery in Dundee released its 2023 Estate Rosé of Pinot Noir with a label that lists ingredients and the nutrition facts for a five-ounce serving, including calorie, carbohydrate, fat and protein amounts. In the future, Sokol Blosser plans to offer this information for all its wines.

Two weeks later, Troon Vineyard in Grants Pass announced it was adding QR codes to the ingredient labels it launched in 2023. The codes direct consumers to the winery’s website to receive information on ingredients, nutritional information and wine packaging, including bottle weight.

Part of the wineries’ motivation to act, they say, was a belief that the United States would soon follow the E.U.’s lead, and that the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) would eventually require ingredient and nutritional labeling in some form. For Sokol Blosser, it was also a matter of ensuring that the wines they exported to Europe complied with E.U. law.

Craig Camp, Troon’s general manager, thinks that while it is inevitable the TTB will follow Europe’s lead, he does expect pushback from the larger producers. He believes large industrial producers fear consumers will react negatively to the additives they use.

“Ninety percent of the wines in the marketplace are made that way,” Camp says. “I think people will be particularly surprised by how much sugar is involved.”

But Troon and Sokol Blosser are eager to keep up with consumer and trade partners’ desire for ingredient and nutritional information access. “We’re a small niche winery working with niche varietals,” Camp continues. “People who buy our wines want to know this information, and we want them to have it.”

For Sokol Blosser president Alex Sokol Blosser, it was also a matter of capturing the attention of a particular market segment. “Millennials and Gen Z-ers want this information, and they could care less about descriptions on the label like ‘this wine smells like black roses that have been kissed by butterflies,’” he says.

Sokol Blosser and Troon are momentarily ahead of the curve. Does their positioning offer a competitive advantage? “I want to think it will be good for sales because consumers want this information, and we want to show them that we are an open book,” says Robin Howell, Sokol Blosser’s head winemaker.

Howell adds that she looks forward to consumers being able to compare her wines to brands stressing lower calories, such as Skinnygirl Wines. A Skinnygirl wine typically registers 100 calories per five-ounce serving, compared with Sokol Blosser’s rosé, which has 117 calories, or Troon’s Roussanne, which has 102 calories.

Sokol Blosser also notes one big surprise: the positive reaction from winery team members who are diabetics. “There are a lot of people in this country who have diabetes, and I never stopped to think about how important being able to track carbs in their wine would be for them,” Sokol Blosser says.

Of course, placing nutritional information on the labels isn’t new. Oregon wineries like Brick House Wines, Omero Cellars and Art + Science already blazed this trail. But action from Sokol Blosser and Troop suggest it won’t take long until other Oregon wineries follow suit—and with them, potentially, wineries nationwide. At the annual Willamette Valley Wineries Association in February, approximately half of the attendees raised their hands when asked if they were planning to add ingredient and/or nutritional information to their labels.

“I think this type of labeling will become more typical, and not just with the biodynamic and regenerative wineries,” Camp says. “I think Oregon, as always, will lead the way in this category.”

However, questions linger about any future mandatory TTB labeling regulations. “What is considered an ingredient?” Sokol Blosser wonders. “That is the biggest concern of wineries.”

Howell hopes that the TTB requires wineries to list only what makes it into the wine and not processing aids, which she says is how the E.U. handles ingredients. For example, Sokol Blosser used bentonite as a fining agent for their rosé. Since it’s racked off and a consumer doesn’t ingest it, bentonite doesn't appear on the wine's label.

Another concern? The cost of nutritional testing at a laboratory, which Sokol Blosser says costs $400 for each vintage of wine. Jay Somers of J.C. Somers Vintner believes that even one more cost to production could be challenging. “Our margins shrink every year,” Somers says. “Even with paying one employee a ridiculously low salary, as a small producer, we at best break even.”

That $400 test may not be necessary for every wine, admits Howell, who already tests for alcohol level, sugar levels and titratable acidity. Using a standardized glycerin number, Howell says she can calculate the nutritional numbers for future labels. But for his part, Sokol Blosser describes his winery’s overall labeling costs as “minimal.”

Whatever the TTB decides to do, Sokol Blosser says, “We and other wineries want the TTB and the E.U. to be on the same page.”

Our Labeling Coverage

• In "The E.U. Is Adding Nutrition Info to Wine Labels. Is the U.S. Next?" Writer-at-Large Aleks Zecevic digs deep into the details of the mandate and how it could impact U.S. producers.
• Organic wines from the E.U. may no longer be labeled as such in America because of new U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations. Reporter Kate Dingwall explains why.
• "What Makes a Good Wine Label?" asks Paul Gregutt. In this piece, he shares the three key elements.
• Labeling terms can often be confusing and misleading. Gregutt explores which words have meaning, which ones don't and what consumers should pay attention to.

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The post As Oregon Wineries Add Ingredient and Nutrition Info to Labels, Will More Follow? appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.

But two years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nightlife goes on. Investigative reporter Adam Robb has been traveling into the country to talk to locals and document everyday life for everyday citizens who have been living amongst the backdrop of war. 

In his journey, which he wrote about for Wine Enthusiast, Robb visited experimental cocktail bars that highlight foraged ingredients—some of which hail from the forests around Chernobyl—coffee roasteries, dance clubs and Neapolitan-style pizzerias, observing the atmosphere and chatting with the hospitality professionals who aim to bring a sense of normalcy to people living through extraordinary times.

Along the way, Robb learned how living amongst drone and missile attacks, drafts and daily deaths and injuries “brings out a real selflessness,” he tells us on this week’s episode of The Wine Enthusiast Podcast. 

“People don’t expect to be driven to that level of virtue,” he says. “The best of them experience a level of empathy that no human being is normally pushed to experience.”

Listen as Robb goes deep on his experiences and offers a peek into the Russo-Ukrainian War through the lens of the country’s hospitality industry. He shares insights into how drinks professionals have been stepping up to create safe spaces for their communities to come together and enjoy the moment, the creativity of the Ukrainian mixology scene, how it warrants a place in the international spotlight and his plans to try to help it garner the attention it deserves.

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Episode Transcript

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting.

Speakers: Sara Ventiera, Adam Robb, Samantha Sette

Sara Ventiera  00:09

Hello, and welcome to the Wine Enthusiast podcast. You’re serving the drinks culture and the people who drive it. I’m Sara Ventiera, senior digital editor here at Wine Enthusiast. On February 24 2022, Russian forces invaded Ukraine in what has become the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War Two. More than two years later, the fighting continues. But for Ukrainians who have stayed in the country everyday life goes on. Last year, investigative reporter Adam Robb spent a night out bar hopping in Lviv and documented his evening eating pizza and drinking gin and tonics to the sound of air raid warnings for Wine Enthusiast. He recently returned from a major bar event in Kyiv. So we decided to check in on the current state of the country and its nightlife scene. Listen to find out about the lessons learned about trying to live a normal life against the backdrop of war.  All right, Adam, so you wrote this really amazing piece for us about a night out drinking in Ukraine with air sirens voiced by Mark Hamill, going off in the background, lots of people drinking and living their lives. Let’s just start from the beginning. Why did you go to Ukraine in the first place?

Adam Robb  01:26

Yeah, so the day of the Russian invasion, I remember I was in Paris working on the travel story, and meeting with some documentary producers about a trafficking investigation I was working on at the time, and I was in the bathtub with the Meurice drinking Champagne in the bottle of Ruinart that, like they sent up. And I was watching the news of the invasion on the TV screen built into the bathroom mirror from the bathtub. And that’s my first association with alcohol in Ukraine, and that was February ’22. So, December two years ago, at the end of 2022, I should say spent most of 2021 and 2022, more than a year and a half investigating a big crypto fraud scheme. And by the end of 2022, that story had led me down another rabbit hole. And suddenly I found myself having dinner at Torrisi. So with Ja Rule. Now, Ja Rule and his business partners who declined to partake in this particular fraud scam, I was investigating. And he and his partners were so proud of this fact. Now generally, two business partners, one was in the background really just on paper, and the other was running his day to day operations. And that guy is my point person. So, right before dinner—I don’t know why I hadn’t done this earlier—but I looked up the third partner, the one on paper, and I’m looking at the Google results back when Google Search worked. And I thought, wow, this guy has the worst SEO imaginable because every result for his name is about some guy who was arrested 20 years ago for kidnapping and torturing and branding someone. And it got me thinking, when was Ja Rule in prison? And what was this guy in prison? Were they in prison at the same time? And it’ll start to click in my head. So, now I’m a little freaked out. I have just enough time to watch the episode of What Order SVU they made about Ja Rule’s business partner. You could look it up and watch it on streaming. It’s called “Branded.” And I’m watching the episode but don’t have to leave for dinner. And I’m stressing about how do I bring this up in conversation? Where do I bring this up? Do I bring this up and I get to Torrisi and Ja Rule is running three hours late, so I’m sitting with his publicist, drinking Negronis, eating bread and finally Ja sits down. And I’ll say he’s incredibly charming and charismatic and person and the waiter rushes over, I remember, Ja charmed the reading glasses right off the waiter’s face and wore them the rest of the night, reading the menu and the waiter Ja Rule, if you wanted an emergency martini to catch up with us. And instead Ja Rule ordered a Moscow Mule, but he caught himself and said “Wait, no, we can’t say that anymore because of Russia.” And he ordered a Kyiv instead, and I just must have made some mental note that at that moment, like wow, Ja Rule is so about international affairs and boycotting Russia, and good for him. So, in the back of my mind that Ruinart moment, the Moscow Mule moment, I think subconsciously, I’ve been primed to think about Ukraine and drinking in context together for a year before I committed to traveling there. And a few months after the Ja Rule dinner, I’m about to publish the investigation but Buzzfeed News shuts down before the story is published. And right away, I found another investigation for New York Magazine. And I remember I was in a group that maybe were in Beverly Hills at Dante, I get the phone call from my editor: go ahead with the investigation. And I’m off to the Cannes Film Festival for a few weeks to investigate an LA bar owner turned movie producer who had previously confessed to me that he was under investigation for terrorism. And it was years earlier we were at this great little sushi restaurant in Silverlake that isn’t there anymore. And he just got off the phone with his lawyer who had broken the news to him and maybe he had a little too much sake and felt confessional at that moment, and now all these years later, he’s a movie producer with a project at Cannes, it’s a big story. And the week after I get back from France, the story becomes a little too heated, and that story gets killed. And first I’ll just say, because this is the Wine Enthusiast podcast, I do all my food and drink and travel writing and research while also reporting out longer investigative, intensive, aggressive stories.. So, if you do find yourself in Cannes, you’d be remiss not check out the Turkish Coffee Negroni and the Tobacco and Date Old Fashioned at Rüya, a Turkish restaurant on the terrace at Carlton Hotel in Cannes or take a long walk to the Bijou Plage from the vendor central guys at the end of the Pointe Croisette and grab a Garibaldi there at sunset. But after two of those long investigations got killed back-to-back, I needed a break from writing about bad people. And I’m looking to write something more positive. So, last August, I’m wondering what to do next, and I read a story in The Washington Post by their Ukraine Bureau Chief. And it’s all about how Ukrainians are boycotting Campari, because it’s sold in Russia. And I realized a few things while reading the story. One, I guess, I can’t drink Garibaldis anymore. Two, I realize it’s possible to write lifestyle coverage about a country at war. Their story, The Washington Post story, is written through a business lens, but they’re also talking to local bar owners. And it made me think long before Alex Garland’s Civil War movie had come out this past spring, like what would lifestyle reporting journalism look like during a ground war, and in Civil War, it’s like a road trip movie following journalists traveling from New York to DC. And one of the journalists writes for, quote unquote, like what’s left of The New York Times. And that was the headspace I was in reading this Washington Post story a year ago thinking like, if we are at war in America, and we also have media jobs, what would The New York Times’ style section, food section, travel section, T Magazine, what would Wine Enthusiast be publishing every day, every month? And that’s when it all kind of clicked for me to start covering the bar scene over there. And I hate to say this, but before I pitched Wine Enthusiast, I pitched another nameless spirits publication, and the editor, that outlet had told me that this was a terrible idea. Because if I wrote about the hospitality scene in Ukraine, they wouldn’t be seen as suffering enough. And this is really upsetting to me, because I think, if I’m living in a country at war, and I’m trying to hustle and do my thing, and live my best life—because we only have this one life—and it’s one moment, we’re only this age once, that I would want some foreign journalists to find me in America, and capture me with all my dignity and spirit. And I would want there to be some document that said, I got through this time being active and creative, being a great bartender, a great chef, giving comfort to others contributing something, not that I was just some anonymous face waiting in line for a bowl of borscht from some international aid organization. And, and I’ve been guilty of that, I had written a story prior for Food & Wine Magazine, where I interviewed José Andrés on the phone while he was driving out of Ukraine, and I tried to go with him and it didn’t work out. So, I don’t really have a sense of the ground. And, so I finally went on my own, I wasn’t with any American chefs, and I wasn’t shadowing anyone, I just kind of immersed myself in it. And I think my reporting was better off for it. And the third thing I realized, during The Washington Post story was I realized war reporters go to terrible bars. I realize now, when I see a war movie, and they’re all the hotel, bar drinking, bragging, fucking, watching CNN, whatever they’re doing, they really just don’t know where else to get a good drink and they don’t care. So, I Googled the bars in the Washington Post article, and I just knew there had to be better options out there. And I think the first thing I did was check the World’s 50 Best Bars Discovery list. If there was a legitimate great bar over there, as a starting point, it would be on their list, and there were a few. So, I followed those bars to Instagram and found the bartenders and seeing who they follow, where they go, what they post, and then moved on to restaurants and began piecing together an itinerary and requesting interviews. I should point out, it’s an insane thing to do. It felt very good. And I just wanted to contribute something positive to the world. I wanted to challenge myself. And again, it’s an insane thing to say, but at that point, I’d been really burnt out from investigations and I felt like I’d rather die than have their story killed. And, in terms of the kind of reporting I’d like to do, these stories aren’t offending litigious people and they would see the light of day. And that was really reassuring to me. So, no matter what happened, the reporting wouldn’t be frustrated by some outside force. And I felt better and safer doing it. 

Sara Ventiera  09:06

Well, I think those were two things that really struck me about the story when I was going through it. One, was, A, the bar scene sounded incredible, and the cocktails and creativity just sounded like what you would find in I mean any major city with a great culinary scene. But on top of it, the sort of sense of normalcy in the midst of this, you know, major war,  it kind of struck me in a way where it’s like, it’s hard to imagine what that would be like, you know, as an American who hasn’t lived through, you know, a ground war like that. You know, like how do you carry on with your life while you’re surrounded by fighting and you know, airstrikes and all of those sorts of things. And I think you did such a great job of sort of like, showing what that process was like.

Adam Robb  09:56

It was just surprising to me being on the ground, I think, I was also working on story at the time for Conde Nast Traveler about Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw and them setting up business there, and I felt on my first trip to Ukraine that it was so easy interview everyone that they were very focused, very engaged, and I guess very stoic. And that surprised me. No one, no one was overly emotional while I was speaking to them. And then when I got to Warsaw, and I spoke to Ukrainians who had left the country behind, and they knew they were safe now, they were the people who were emotional, they were the people who cried, because they walked away and, and went toward safety and a better life, and I think they had some, some residual guilt. But everyone on the ground in Ukraine was just everyday living their fullest day-to-day life, even though like the PTSD, like the collective PTSD of, of whole towns, villages, cities, was just, it was like electricity in the air, like you couldn’t not feel it, no matter where you went. And eventually you figure out that there are bars, where people go to, to drink, to cope. And there are bars, you can quietly or loudly celebrate or just live for today. And so it took a while to get a sense that those were two very distinct things. 

Sara Ventiera  11:16

Yeah, I think I mean, you seem to in the piece, highlight the bars where people we’re living for today. I know, you mentioned that it was mostly women that were in the bars, because a lot of the men were out fighting. What was the difference between, you know, the vibes in those bars versus the vibes, and the ones where people were going just to cope?

Adam Robb  11:37

I remember my first day in Lviv, going to a coffee shop, and it being very busy. It was a beautiful, sunny day, last September/October. And there were lots of people outside with their laptops working or, or just relaxing in the sun. But there was a very quiet energy about it. And I couldn’t quite figure out where that was coming from. And the coffee shop owner explained to me that you just don’t know, if the person next to you just lost someone, or they just found out they’re briefly being drafted. And everyone’s mindful of that in an environment like that, and want to be respectful and quiet, and no one gets too rowdy. And then a few hundred feet away, there was a bar called People Place that had a DJ in the window, and had like groups of women, young women dressed up going out for the night, and like kicking off their night there with a non-Aperol, Aperol Spritz because they were boycotting Aperol. And it was crazy how that shift could just be a few hundred feet apart. And you could walk from one room to another.  

Sara Ventiera  12:50

Well, and I mean, what is it— you know, again, hard to imagine—but what is it like going into a bar like that? You know, most bar scenes, it’s a lot of people looking to go out and meet members of whatever sex they’re attracted to. So for it to be mostly women, like, what did that feel like?

Adam Robb  13:11

It took a minute to realize that there were no men. That happened to me more than once that I remember just a couple of weeks ago, leaving Ukraine on my last trip, that I was taking the train out back to Poland, and I’m looking around the train car. And it took me a minute to realize I was the only man on the train. And the men since the second day of the war, they haven’t been allowed to leave the country, if they’re able bodied between a certain age, and it was just all women and children around me. And it’s just like a shocking thing to witness and realize that these are the people left behind. The men, the male bar owners that I’ve met, seemed more worried about business than about being drafted, which is good. But really, they were just living for that day in that moment. And I think the women going to really busy popular bars like that were very much doing the same. There was a sense I think, a year ago, where it was more inappropriate, more looked down upon to party. And then on this past trip, I went to a brand new bar in Kyiv called Haram that was like a multi story underground nightclub, like a big popular steakhouse in Kyiv. And they had opened in the past year during the war. And it had multiple, you go in downstairs and just the coat check is the size of like other bars I’ve been to and then you go into this massive cavernous underground party space and there’s multiple like unique bars. One was like a smoking bar where every drink is smoked and you can also smoke cigarettes.  And then you like travel downstairs, to this other bar beneath with a huge sacrilegious stained window of the crucifixion, which is also the beginning orgy and there’s a gospel choir with a live band on the side performing like Bruno Mars songs and rap songs, and everyone’s like dancing and just letting off steam, and I think that was kind of missing in the first year. And now people feel either they’re in for a long haul and they can engage with those feelings where it’s okay to just like, let go and let loose. But those are behind closed doors. I think in Kyiv way more than in Lviv, you saw more speakeasies, you saw more unmarked bars, where the best bars in town and the 50 Best Discovery bars like Loggerhead and Beatnik those bars are almost like real speakeasies. You’re not meant to distract from the more somber energy of the city, I guess. 

Sara Ventiera  15:40

And so, okay, so your first trip was to Lviv, right? And this last trip you went, to Kviv or did you travel to both cities? 

Adam Robb  15:50

I went to more places this time. So, yeah, I got a better sense of the country on the most recent trip. But I started in Lviv, took the train to Kviv for what was the first bar show in Ukraine in three years. It was a partnership with Diageo Bar Academy, they put on a show called, uh, the Ukrainian word for unity. And they invited all the best bartenders from around the country. I think they came from everywhere, but Kharkiv. They came from Odessa, Lviv, and Kyvi. And it was the first time like bartenders can see each other in three years. I remember speaking to a bartender from Odessa who has a bar, Fakultat, which is like one of the best bars down there. And he said, his friends don’t come to the bar he owns, he tells them not to come because Odessa is so affected by drone attacks. And drones are really cheap. And so, while Kyiv is always subject to missile attacks, they have a strong missile defense system. But you wouldn’t waste the money to use a missile against a drone. And so the drone attacks are very common in Odessa, and it’s a more dangerous place. And, so he lost his staff, but they left to go to bars in the E.U. or elsewhere. But he was the owner. And he just kind of like been, you know, alone every day in the bar opening and powering through, like representing Ukrainian Odessa and trying to find people with that same spirit like to work alongside him. But he was so excited to come up to Kyiv  and see guys from some of the other bar programs, women at the bar programs to get a sense of just what we’ve all been working on the past three years and to try each others’ drinks and new menus and new concepts. And, even though bar shows are so common, and there’s like the Rome bar show was like a week later, and two resort bar shows next week, and then Bar Convent in Brooklyn and Tales of the Cocktail. But like, it’s a common thing that’s easy enough for local bartenders to find in their community. But it was a big deal to have a bar show in Kyiv. And it just brought out the best of everyone. And so that was the other side of the city. And the surrealness of that was that the night before everyone had arrived, everyone stayed at the same hotel on that Friday night. And there was news that week that Russia was going to attack, like blow up two Kyiv hospitals because they said they were actually like secret military bases. And this was kind of like, I think it’s in the news, it’s like the rumor going around, that ever was nervous there was gonna be an attack on Kyiv that weekend. And, so I remember taking the train from Lyiv to Kyiv, it was like a six hour train ride and getting there at 10:30 pm, and everything closes at like 11 pm and curfew is at midnight. And, like everyone making a rush toward McDonald’s while the alarm is going off at 10:35 pm, and they’re turning people away. And then I had to find my car and it’s my Holiday Inn all before midnight, and then just getting there and hearing the air sirens and when the air sirens wind down, use your dogs howling the street. And you just hear that from like 11 pm till like I think was like 4 am that night. And by 5am I went back to sleep and by 10 or 11 am I guess I woke up and, and like everyone else, I made my way to the bar show. And I realized, I’ve come to realize being there. And it’s a bit of a thing if you learn what’s important, and you put the small things about last night behind you, and you live in the moment. And so everyone went to that bar show. It was a sunny day. Nothing else happened that weekend. And we all lived in the moment and that was a very inspiring thing to witness. So, yeah, so when I rode the train from Lviv to Kyiv, I rode the train with other bartenders who have bars in Lviv and they were very excited for the bar show, just to have something else to go somewhere to see people. And the FMB director at the hotel I was staying at in Lviv, The Grand Hotel, the best hotel in town, she was very proud of the hotel bar program and they had just opened,  like a big Hennessy lounge near a cigar lounge. I don’t think people realize people are coming to spend money and they’re updating things and they’re proud of the environment they create for other people. And she had been through a lot. She was saying her brother-in-law is fighting east now, that she’d lost her brother fighting in the east last year. And she still wakes up every day and it’s really proud of the bars and the restaurants she runs in the hotel. And we got to talking about the program, and people don’t just like to live with their head in the sand or they live in a bomb shelter. Like you want to go out and experience life, experience your interest, your passion, your career and advance yourself, what would make you happy every day, and and feel fulfilled. So, no matter where I went in Ukraine, it was good to see people behaving that way. And I just think that’s something that gets a little underreported.

Sara Ventiera  20:50

Yeah, I mean, it seems, you know, I again, can only imagine what it’s like living under those circumstances and how that must impact your nervous system. Like, I’m sure hearing air raid sirens or as you mentioned, Mark Hamill from Star Wars’ voice going off announcing an air raid, has to affect you on a level that, you know, is beyond just anxiety, but like impacting your body and like your overall nervous system. 

Adam Robb  21:17

I’m glad to say that Mark Hamill’s voice does not give me PTSD right now. But it was a crazy thing, when I was in LA a year ago, I was with this music manager who’s friendly with him. He and his wife were talking about having Mark Hamill over for dinner that Friday night. And I was like, oh, what a nice thing it is to have Luke Skywalker over at your house. And the closest I’ve ever come to that is hearing Mark Hamill telling me to seek shelter during an air raid in Lviv. And it’s a weird thing that he did that, that he recorded. A different voice does it in Ukrainian, but the English version of the air alert app is Mark’s voice telling you “your overconfidence is your weakness,” which is something he says that the Emperor in I think “Return of the Jedi,” and to seek shelter. And then you hear this like a piercing air siren emitting from your phone. And then when you get the all clear, he wishes you “may the force be with you” and tells you it’s all okay. It’s comforting and eerie at the same time. I guess it’s nice to hear a familiar voice overseas. But also be aware you’re listening to a recording that exists long after you know society has vanished off the face of the earth. But still, Mark Hamill’s voice lives on an app warning people to seek shelter, a little dystopian, but it depends who you’re with and it depends on your own seek-your-own-adventure attitude. But there are people who turn the alarm off. And I’ve gotten to the point where I trust people more now in telegram groups, telegram chats to tell me what’s going on than just the more general app, which is just a picture of a missile, saying like, you know, seek shelter. And you adapt and a lot of people that Friday night, because the missiles ever came from Russia. And just the alarm sounded all night. They went to sleep where they tried to sleep, but did not go to the bomb shelter. And the first time the air raid siren went off, the first time I heard Mark Hamill’s voice I was at this bar called Siaivo, which is this amazing, two-story, coffee shop, cocktail bar that reminds me of Drink in Boston. It had low countertops and a very engaging bartender across the way to make you whatever you wanted. And it was with the bar manager, the bar owner, there, and like great guys, and they didn’t even download the app yet. And they were telling me they were looking at their phone when the alarm was sounded. So, I’d download the app right away. And I was like, should we go? And they were like, no, no, no, like, our friends tell us through Telegram that it’s actually just like, Russian planes are flying overhead doing an exercise or something. And it’s not anything we need to immediately prepare for. And, so I stayed out, I knew someone who was staying at a hotel in town, and she messaged me, and she had gone down to the bomb shelter of the hotel, which also doubled at the hotel spa, like in the basement, and she was sitting there on a bench. And people were like in their towels going to it from the spa. She felt embarrassed. And I decided like, you know, you shouldn’t be down there, like, it’s okay, got her out of the bomb shelter and took her drinking. I was glad she cooperated with that and trusted me. And we had a great night and we were able to have like five more hours of our life back to go out and enjoy the city and not worry. And then the alarm sounded, it was all clear, and we were good to enjoy the rest of the evening. But I kind of feel that the only story you find in a bomb shelter is if something happens to you there. So, that’s not where I’d want to be.

Samantha Sette  24:37

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Sara Ventiera  25:09

You detailed the night in the story a bit where you went to the first party since Siaivo. Alright, so that’s how you pronounce it?

Adam Robb  25:16

 I hope so. 

Sara Ventiera  25:17

Okay. And I think you were drinking gin and tonics, I believe.

Adam Robb  25:22

Yeah, they had, they had a great gin bar. And it was the same weekend, or same days as like a big tech conference. And so the bar was like, packed with people from the tech conference, it was rush hour happy hour, it was a full scene. So, it was free just to witness like a normal weekday and see a thriving city and a thriving bar, and it feels like home. And the more you enter environments like that bar at that time, like, the more it feels relatable to you, in America, or anywhere. And it feels like, okay, this is just a normal life, they’re living a normal life. And so it just makes you feel safer and more at ease every day, which was like a good feeling. And it’s a collective feeling. If everyone goes to the bar, if everyone goes out after work, then it just makes the people around them feel more secure. And I remember talking to coffee shop owners, Svit Kavy, the oldest roastery in town. And they were saying how very early on in the war, when the siren sounded, the sense was that everyone should close the doors and pack up and go in the shelter, either like beneath a coffee shop or find one nearby. Pretty much every building had a basement, at least in Lviv. And they got the sense over time that their customers would rather come out. And they felt psychologically safer, healthier, better for it for all being together in the coffee shop, or all being together in the bar, instead of being alone in your basement. And so it was a unique example of resilience to experience. And you don’t really think that just having a gin and tonic at a bar during the evening rush is an act of resilience or an act of rebellion. But it is. It’s a small thing that makes people feel good and feel strong. And that was inspiring to witness.

Sara Ventiera  27:14

And, you know, I know you went to a bunch of other places as well. And I’d say again, the cocktails and the mixology sounded very impressive. What drinks and dishes were you most impressed by?

Adam Robb  27:32

The bar where I was when I got the all clear that first night, second night  was Sino Experimental. Andre, the original owner, and bartender there, he—and a lot of bar owners—talked about how before the war, they all had to kind of like, operate through COVID, which had its own challenges, and then operate in the war. But, so during COVID, he did a lot of batch drinks, which led to him canning or bottling cocktails. And then during the war, he got really into foraging. And it was fascinating. Because I think, everyone, there’s probably something disassociative a little bit, everyone likes to put out their minds when they’re over there. And I think one thing I put out of my mind was wow, we’re really close to Chernobly. And having watched the HBO series—you just don’t think people are foraging in Ukraine. And like in the forest in the West like Transcarpathia, or in the east around Chernobyl, and then putting those things in food or drink. And it’s not good. And he was talking about how he made a really popular cherry soda whiskey drink and the cherries all came from a foraging trip, up a mountain he met someone who had on his property with wild cherry trees growing and offered him all the cherries, he wanted to use them to make the drink. And it’s my assumption that I’m sure foraging is safe and bright enough in the west. And so his drinks, which were based on lots of ingredients, including mushrooms and other things he found like that, that made the bar popular and it allowed him to really stand out at that time. But then, just like last week or two weeks ago, I was with Scott Klopotenko, who’s the most famous chef in Ukraine. He has a new cookbook route about capturing the flavors of all the regions in Ukraine. And he was telling me that before the war, he actually foraged around Chernobyl and served things he found there in the restaurant, like little touches and garnishes in dishes—which absolutely blew my mind. And he was saddened because of the war, all the forest area around Chernobyl is now laid landmines. So, you can’t park there anymore. But I was surprised to see how it doesn’t bother Ukrainians to at least engage their produce and engage foraging. The last thing I thought about was like where my food and drinks were coming from while I was there. But yeah, Andre at Sino changed the menu every week and he just used what was seasonal, what he could find around to really challenge people’s perception of what you know classic cocktails were, and so that was, that was no surprise. And then he led me to another bar called Bar Over, which was a spin off of a bar called a Ditch Bar in Kharkiv. And Kharkiv is all the way in eastern Ukraine, kind of like near the front line that is attacked. I think I was just horribly attacked the last couple days. And Ditch Bar is one of the last bars standing in Kharkiv, and also one of the best—very cool bars, they take care of their own. People come there and get whatever resources they need, but also they make awesome cocktails. They do canned cocktails to go, and one of the owners from Ditch Bar decided to move west and open in Lviv. And you saw a lot of bar owners from the east more and more opening in the west, where it’s safer. There’s less of a reason to attack the west of Ukraine. And so they were opening in Lviv. And so the open bar over there, and it’s this beautiful, intimate upstairs bar and dining room. And just like class cocktails, I mean, he made an excellent Negroni with a non Campari product. And everyone creates not only great drinks, but really intimate environments, everyone really focuses on making a stand out space that is unique into itself, both for its menu and it’s decor and ambiance, energy, like would make it a bar you would see on a 50 Best Discovery list or 50 Best list if they were judges getting in the country, which there are there aren’t right now. 

Sara Ventiera  31:25  

Yeah, I mean, speaking of which, how did you even get into the country? How did that process work? 

Adam Robb  31:31  

Yeah, I flew from New York to Krakow. Krakow, the nearest big airport to the Ukrainian border and so there’s a great car service called A Transfer, highly recommended. And it’s all Mercedes Sprinter vans or Mercedes. But they’ll take you the six hours it takes to drive from Krakow airport to Lviv for less than the price of an Uber from Midtown to Atlantic City. And so as far as bad ideas go, that was an affordable one. And so they’re great drivers. They know how to navigate Polish customs, and Ukrainian border control. And the first three, three and a half hours to drive from Krakow to the border, it’s just open highways and you see US military equipment, or other NATO military equipment moving into Ukraine. So, you see police cars, like escorting tanks and things up flatbeds, going into the country. And then you get to the border control and it’s multiple lines. Because no planes go into Ukraine or ships, everything comes in now by truck from the west. So, you see miles and miles of lines and trucks that are like everything for World Central Kitchen to fuel, whatever. And so you see those backed up for, I have no idea how long they process, I can imagine how long those drivers like sleeping their trucks, waiting to just move up, I guess one batch at a time, through customs. The car lines are a little bit shorter and so when you enter Ukraine, when you leave the EU,  you leave Poland, you get ushered through, they don’t really like to search your luggage or anything. And then in Ukraine, it’s pretty easy. The only issues are like when you leave Ukraine and get to the EU, I will say they search everything. It takes forever. And I do not recommend the car to leave Ukraine because those lines are tragic. It’s much faster on a train or on a bus. But my experience was that when you leave Ukraine, they open. Like when I was on a train with all the Ukrainian women, they opened every woman’s suitcase and they went through like every possession. They’re just really looking to see what gets smuggled out of Ukraine, into the EU. And yeah, on a human level you can understand that, you know, people want to take valuables with them whatever is important to them and get it, but then I understand you also worry about other kinds of smuggling. But they are very strict and search everything and that slows down the line. So, if it’s six hours going in, it could be like 24 hours going out. So it’s much faster on the train or bus. But the car was the best way. And, so I took the car on the first day and got to Lviv in the morning, and I was slowed down by about an hour. I already had a full schedule of appointments of people to meet and I already missed my first one. I was already feeling over my head because about an hour outside of Lviv traffic just came to a halt, and there was a funeral procession going down the other lane of traffic in whatever small town we were driving through. And our driver got out and I got out, and you saw, like a military band, a whole congregation from a church and young girls like walking behind a hearse with flowers and just the whole town everything stops. And this happens every day because you see the people die every day and there are more every day. And that is one thing that you can’t ignore. And I think that, that was one thing I couldn’t ignore the first time I went. And then the most recent time I went, I think the one that I couldn’t ignore was just how many wounded vets are everywhere, which I did not see a year ago, and how prevalent that was, especially in Kyiv. But going in, we paused for the funeral and then made our way into the city. And I already missed my first appointment with a bakery that I just wrote about last week for New York Magazine that had a viral pastry. And I felt bad because these people, again, have a thriving business, and they’re trying to live their best lives. And you know, I’m late to the game in terms of reporters coming to Ukraine. And so I’m sure they’ve dealt with foreign press before. And, you know, I didn’t need me holding up their whole day. So, it took me a while to get acclimated and to apologize to them, and get a second interview. And that was an adjustment. And I went to the Lviv Tourism Board Office to check in with them, I think they’ve become, they’ve kind of pivoted to being a press liaison office. And they were kind enough to just help smooth over some introductions and, and set me on the right foot for the rest of the day to go smoothly. And they felt good. And then, you know, within hours, I think, after that I really felt at home with everyone I spoke to. And you know, you go to the hotel, you check in the hotel, like you would anywhere else. I think the only thing is that American Express does not work anywhere in Ukraine. And other than that I felt pretty at ease, and that you check in is like any other hotel with all the amenities. Then use that as my jumping off point to just before we town. And then the only thing that was like, I guess little eerie was the end of the first night coming back there, and just like realizing, like the streets out the window are empty. And we’re all just indoors now until the next day. 

Sara Ventiera  36:52  

Yeah, I mean, I guess that’s like my last question, like having gone twice now and having experienced what it’s, you know, or getting a little taste of what it’s like to live life, or at least see life being lived in the midst of war. What’s your takeaway from those experiences, like, what did it leave you with?

Adam Robb  37:17  

It just left me feeling. I wish when this is all over, and people go back, and like, look at the reporting done. I know all the reporting that everyone’s doing over there, at the moment is very important when we’re talking about troop movements and aid and, and money. But I just think the human aspect is a little bit overlooked. And, and I would love to know, after all this, I’d love to see more reporting like that, and just more peoples’ stories told. Because, for the average citizen in all these cities, and towns or villages everywhere, there are just moments that would be otherwise recognized or celebrated just aren’t being seen by the outside world, or even maybe, you know, in the larger world in the country, and that just makes me feel terrible. I just think about how in the US there’s been such a shift from outlets closing and a shift from hard news reporting to lifestyle reporting and influencers and, and TikTok and personal essays, and I think it’s ingrained in Americans under any conditions, the COVID the pandemic is example this like, we’ll always kind of like, celebrate and recognize what we’re doing amongst ourselves. And I don’t see enough of that. I think maybe it’s not ingrained in people over there anyway, to just live that way. And maybe it’s too narcissistic, but people should get recognized for the good work they do. And I just wish there were more reporters there exploring that. So, I find that fulfilling and it motivates me to keep going back. So, I’m going back in a couple weeks, I’m going back in August to make a documentary. And I just want people there to feel more seen. And and I just want American readers to have more empathy and see themselves in these people and not think that victims of any war, any violence, a tragedy anywhere are like some other kinds of people that aren’t like themselves, because going over there you very much feel these people are are just like you, and I just want that to be better recognized.

Sara Ventiera  39:35  

Yeah, I think that you did a really great job of sort of highlighting the everyday life and like everyday successes and accomplishments of people, but also just the resilience and sort of will to keep going in the face of catastrophic circumstances. I’d imagine that it would probably leave a mark and sort of change you to some extent after having experienced that where most of us have not come even close. 

Adam Robb  40:01  

I think it changed for the better. I think that the people I’ve spoken with would talk about how they’ve been living their lives the last two and a half years, the best of them experience a level of empathy that no human being is normally pushed to experience. And the way they just see themself and one another, and are eager to help one another and engage one another, it brings out a real selflessness and everyone, that is, people don’t expect to be driven to that level of virtue. And it’s a great thing they are and they recognize it’s a great thing, that they have become virtuous in that way. But it shouldn’t take a tragedy to make people that virtuous. 

Sara Ventiera  40:46  

So would you say the takeaway is, we all need to cultivate more empathy for one another? 

Adam Robb  40:53  

Cultivate more empathy and see yourself in other people and that diplomacy is always the best solution.

Sara Ventiera  41:02  

Well, on that note, I really appreciate your time with us and your work on the story. It was a pleasure to read, and we’re very happy to have it on our site. And thank you. 

Adam Robb  41:15  

Thank you so much.

Sara Ventiera  41:21  

It’s hard to imagine how one would go on living life in such extraordinary circumstances. But we’re grateful to get a peek into the ways Ukraine’s hospitality professionals have attempted to cultivate a sense of normalcy and escape for their community. How would you cope? We want to know, you can email us your comments and questions at podcast@winenthusiast.net. Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify and anywhere else you listen to your favorite shows. You can also go to wineenthusiast.com/podcast for more episodes and transcripts. I’m Sara Ventiera, thanks for listening.

The post Two Years Into the Russian Invasion, Ukrainian Nightlife Is Thriving appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.

We didn’t know that during the summer morning of 2012, when he helped me tend to our Syrah vines in the Sta. Rita Hills under unseasonably warm, sunny skies. We didn’t know that in the fall, when my dad harvested his own grapes of Merlot and Syrah at my childhood home in the hilly suburbs of East San Jose, where I’d convinced him to plant the otherwise useless backyard slope in vines.

And we didn’t know that as the calendar approached winter, when my own son—then just on the verge of turning three years old—hopped into our bin at Ampelos Cellars in Lompoc to foot-stomp my first harvest, adding a third generation of Kettmanns to the bottling.

But come May 26, 2013, just two weeks after my parents took us all to Disneyland, my dad was gone, having succumbed at just 63 years of age to a typically treatable leukemia that he’d been secretly fighting for a decade. His silence—and my mom’s—around the disease was because the doctors said he should live well into his 70s. Given that kind of prognosis, he didn’t want others to worry about him, to ask him incessantly how he was doing, to change their lives because of him.

No one expected the cancer to turn so suddenly for the worse. What I also didn’t expect was how his absence would lead me to search, albeit in subtle, even subconscious ways, for new father figures in my life. Men who could continue to lead me along my own path into middle age and parenthood.

Thankfully, me and my dad’s relationship was always tight. My mom’s ascension from-receptionist-to-top-floor in Silicon Valley enabled him to mostly retire for the better part of two decades, not having to return to the tech lab grind of his first career when his struggling golf shop closed.

He was the one who drove my brother and I to school nearly every day until friends turned 16, enduring our endless cassette loops of A Tribe Called Quest’s Low End Theory (which he tolerated more than The Pharcyde and Snoop Dogg).

We were lucky enough to take family vacations abroad every few years. When I was 14, I watched him try to grab his first Guinness pour in Ireland way before it had time to properly settle. A few years later, we hunted for the best gazpacho in Portugal together. We frequently crammed our family of four (and sometimes more) into a tiny seaside studio near Santa Cruz, and golfed together a lot, including on some of the world’s most iconic holes.

When I graduated college, I sought a more grown-up connection. So, I bought him a homebrewing kit, just like the one he’d helped me get when I was 21.

Then I learned, mostly through my mom, that he really didn’t drink that much beer anymore. And certainly not the high potency, occasionally funky stuff that comes out of homebrew kits. (As a mid-forty-something myself now, I no longer drink much of that kind of beer, either.) Instead, as my work as a journalist in Santa Barbara dove deeper and deeper into wine, we connected over that, hence the vines he planted in the backyard.

I’m still a journalist, and never intended to be a winemaker. But I figured that the best way to learn about my preferred topic of writing was to make some myself.

That led me and my good friend Giuseppe Bonfiglio to a partnership with Peter Work, the cheerful, professorial vintner behind Ampelos Cellars who owns a beautiful vineyard in the heart of the Sta. Rita Hills.

Even before my dad passed, I saw Work as a father figure of sorts, holding my hand through the various stages of a biodynamic vineyard’s year, and then opening my eyes to the ways of a cellar. We eventually made more than a half-dozen wines together, including a few, like our 2018 Carignan, that changed his own outlook on wine and opened his eyes to a new varietal for his brand.

After my dad died, more fathers emerged. There were my many uncles—one of whom delivered a ton of under-ripe Cabernet Sauvignon from Lake County to me that next vintage, a hilarious tale all its own.

But many came straight from the world of wine.

There’s my Wine Enthusiast assistant, Chris Coffman, the retired father of my good friend, who helped me erect a stone bench in my backyard where I laid my dad’s ashes, and who helps me process hundreds of reviews every month.

There’s the photographer Macduff Everton, who pushed me to do a book with him, providing sage guidance the whole way toward publishing Vines & Vision: The Winemakers of Santa Barbara County.

And then there’s the legendary Richard Sanford, the man who proved Pinot Noir could work in Santa Barbara County in the 1970s. My dad died a few days after an anniversary tasting was held at the old Sanford & Benedict barn, and Sanford was the first to emphasize to me how life-changing it is to lose a parent.

He was also the first to congratulate me when I was hired by Wine Enthusiast in 2014, and later even “knighted” me with a few of his favorite bow ties. To this day, he reminds me of my unique responsibility as an official scribe for this industry, for this region and for this era.

I was blessed enough to have a fantastic dad from birth. But it’s been rewarding to appreciate how my life, through wine, has been enriched by so many others, friends and mentors who serve as fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. I’m not sure if that happens so much in other industries. Maybe it does.

As to the actual wines of 2012? A bit of a mixed bag. I hand-bottled the inaugural vintage of Merlot and Syrah that my dad harvested from our San Jose backyard, after he’d put in it carboys and served the blend at his memorial. The wine was horrible, and we all had a good laugh.

But our Sta. Rita Hills Syrah from the Ampelos Vineyard was magical, mixing cooler-climate qualities of pepper and bloody game with riper, rich black fruits from a generously warmer vintage. It really tastes of life and death at once.

I called my brand Periodista, which means “journalist” in Spanish (another different, hilarious tale), and labeled the Syrah as the “Big D,” which was my dad’s nickname. In smaller type, it says “Touched by Three Generations — A Toast to Dennis Kettmann 1949-2013.”

It’s the best wine we ever made, something that my extended family relies on to remember my dad. It’s also the vintage that marked the end of one relationship, and the start of many more.

More Stories About Dads and Wine

• In “Father Knows Best: Advice on Life, Love and Wine,” writer Daniela Serrano explores the best dating advice she received from her father through the lens of wine suggestions.
• Writer Ted Simmons explores his relationship with his father in the aftermath of Jimmy Buffet’s death in “Long Live Margaritaville: The Undying Emotional Appeal of Jimmy Buffett.”
• To celebrate the drinks-loving man in your life, take a look at this hand-picked gift guide.

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The post My First Vintage Was My Dad’s Last appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.

Though Viognier has long been made into stand-alone varietal wines, it has garnered a reputation for creating wines that are considered overly rich and thick. But that’s no longer accurate. 

Winemakers in both Viognier’s traditional home and growing regions across the globe are increasingly flipping the script and “consistently producing elegant renditions,” says Anna-Christina Cabrales, Wine Enthusiast’s Tasting Director and resident Rhône reviewer. “Gone are the days where Viognier is just really fat and dense.”

These single-varietal bottles span a wide range of textures and aromas, making them ideal partners for boldly flavored fare like Indian cuisine, complex Thai dishes and Filipino classics.

In hotter vintages, Viognier wines often take on tropical, ginger and ripe citrus flavors. In cooler growing seasons, Viognier’s tropical, ginger and ripe citrus flavors take on a leaner expression. In these instances, lemongrass and spices, like white pepper and saffron, also join the mix.

The best examples deliver ethereal, elegant qualities. “It doesn’t feel like you are chomping into a bowl of fruit cocktail Jell-O,” she says. “It’s like a ballerina that dances across the palate.”

No matter the year or the region, however, these wines warrant exploration. “If people have not picked up a glass of Viognier recently, they should,” says Cabrales. 

We decided it was time to round up the top bottles on the market. From the Condrieu to California to Australia’s Eden Valley, these Viognier wines deserve space on your buying list.

E. Guigal 2020 Viognier (Condrieu)

An exuberance of perfectly ripe yellow and white peaches, apricots, melon, pineapple and delicate white floral aromas overflow from the glass. The palate is luxurious and balanced, with an abundance of melon, dehydrated pineapple, apricot, quince, candied ginger and oak spice. Impressive acidity accentuates its stone finish and helps reset the palate for another sip. Cellar Selection. 96 Points  — Anna-Christina Cabrales

$79.99 Wine.com

Château de Saint Cosme 2020 Viognier (Condrieu)

White-floral aromas rest atop yellow peaches, with hints of fresh jackfruit and pulverized stone. The rich palate is balanced with honeysuckle, ripe lemon, melon and a pithy saline finish. Elegant restraint allows for this wine to be approachable for immediate enjoyment. 94 Points — A.C.

$95 Wallywine.com

Jean-Luc Colombo 2019 Amour De Dieu Viognier (Condrieu)

Fruity aromas of ripe yellow peaches, zesty orange oil, lemon peels, succulent apricots and fresh honey make for a delightful nose. On the palate, it maintains its invigorating freshness, featuring perfectly ripened orchard fruits, citrus zest, stony minerality and a hint of white peppercorn on the finish. 92 Points. 92 Points — A.C.

$101.99 Viscount Wines

Materra Cunat Family Vineyards 2022 Estate Viognier (Oak Knoll District)

This smooth, broad and well-balanced wine is lush and full-bodied, packed with Bartlett and Anjou pears but underlain with a crisp apple acidity. While delicious now, the barrel-fermented wine has the structure to age and improve through at least 2028. 93 Points — Jim Gordon

 

$34 Materra Cunat Family Vineyards

Darioush 2022 Viognier (Napa Valley)

Handsome toasted-oak aromas mingle with subtle honeysuckle and peach nectar notes in this full-bodied, bold and mouthfilling wine. A rounded texture, good viscosity and lingering finish all add to its appeal. 92 Points — J.M.

$65 Blackwell's Wine & Spirits

Yalumba 2020 The Virgilius Viognier (Eden Valley)

This premium Viognier, from the winery that’s cheered loudest for the variety, opens with flint and almond alongside honeyed orchard fruit aromas. Viognier’s characteristically luscious mouthfeel dominates the palate. The fruit and acidity are quiet but holding on after a few years of bottle age. A subdued, food friendly and harmonious drop. 92 Points — Christina Pickard

$48 AOC Selections

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The post No Longer ‘Fat and Dense’: Viognier Has Entered an Era of Elegance appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.

Of course, Prohibition didn’t actually stop people from drinking. Rather, it fueled a desire for bars and lounges that were, often by necessity, small, dark and windowless. Once alcohol was legalized again, many of these moody, private spaces endured. Then, in the early aughts, the craft cocktail movement dovetailed with a resurgence of modern speakeasies that captured a mysterious, Prohibition-era vibe. Today, fervor for these spaces—pioneered by bars like The Blind Barber and Please Don’t Tell, both in New York City—has hit full tilt, spreading to cities on nearly every continent.  

Some modern speakeasies have become status symbols for the “if you know, you know” crowd, offering unique aesthetics and high-end drinking experiences. Many reveal their locations or nightly passwords only on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, adding to an air of exclusivity.  

They often look the part, too, with themed decor and dramatic lighting. Some evoke a vintage 1920s look, while others feature innovative interiors based on another era or an escapist theme. Naturally, digs like these require equally impressive cocktails, and many establishments boast impressive menus that regularly land them in drinking guides. 

As for the speakeasies that deserve a spot on your must-visit list? From a cavernous bar accessed via a flower shop to a fake detective agency and even a hidden bar within a hidden bar, these spots from around the globe offer both exciting experiences and delicious cocktails. 
 

Deep Dive

Seattle, Washington

This vintage-style lounge is tucked away at the base of The Spheres, Amazon’s futuristic campus in Downtown Seattle. Inspired by marquee hotel bars around the world and with a subtle “under the sea” theme, Deep Dive resembles a worldly collector’s vault.  

Its many softly illuminated cabinets and niches are adorned with eccentric objects, artwork and vignettes curated by local artist-gardner Curtis Steiner. Several sculptural floral arrangements add to the intrigue. Seats with deep blue velvet and leather tufted upholstery, plenty of dark wood paneling and a swooping ceiling all provide a sense of intimacy.  

The menu by chef Colin Pentinnen encourages wine and cocktail pairings with the food, with recommendations such as the Low, Sloe and Sour—a take on a Sloe gin fizz—and Ramon’s Margarita, which blends banana liqueur, pineapple and a habanero tincture. 

Foxglove

Hong Kong 

In Hong Kong’s Central neighborhood, Foxglove offers an escapist theme designed around a fictional character, Frank Minza, an English gentleman and “a death-defying adventurer with a taste for rare spirits,” according to operator Ming Fat House.  

The spot’s design elements nod to the golden age of aviation and travel, such as a replica of a 1940s Gloster jet engine mounted behind the stage, which regularly hosts live music. Deep purple seats contrast the white-lacquered coffered ceiling that curves over the bar.  

Cocktails are also inspired by that time period, and the accompanying dim sum menu offers “lyrical flavors, harmonious extracts and nostalgic nuances.” Highlights include the fizzy, fruity White Punch and the Test Pilot, which pairs tropical and coffee flavors and is served in a tiki mug.  

Don’t miss out on Frank’s Library—a speakeasy within a speakeasy—which is hidden behind closed curtains and an elevator panel that guests need to unlock in order to enter. 

Buck and Breck

Berlin

If you’re planning to take pictures on your visit to Buck and Breck, you’ll be disappointed. Cell phones are banned inside this discrete spot on Brunnenstrasse in Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood, where, behind an unassuming and frequently changing street facade (making it tricky to locate), visitors must ring a doorbell to enter.  

The bartender literally takes center stage here, creating cocktails in the middle of a communal table from color-coded bottles for up to 30 guests at a time. The sleek, contemporary interiors feature a crocodile skin-patterned bar top illuminated by five cylindrical overhead lights, and seats positioned around the bar and in booths on stepped levels.

The creative menu changes frequently and depends on the bartender’s whims. (Also to note: It’s closed on Saturdays.) 

Bank Bar

Manila

Perhaps the last place you’d expect to find a chic cocktail lounge is through a 7-Eleven in Manila’s Taguig City. But walk through a stock room, draw back the black curtain and you’ll find this lively little oasis that’s usually busy, colorfully lit and lots of fun.  

The lively spirit is echoed in decor that includes a colonnade of arched cutouts that frame a huge mirror behind the bar (it’s great for people watching) as well as on a screen digitally programmed with quirky imagery.  

The drink list—amongst the most extensive in Manila—is equally vivacious. Highlights include the whiskey-based Due Diligence and the fruity Queen’s Park Swizzle. It’s worth noting that a strict attire code is enforced: no shorts, sandals or cut-off tees are permitted, so dress to impress for guaranteed entry. 

Handshake

Mexico City 

Once you find it, this two-level venue tucked away in trendy Colonia Juarez is all glossy black, shiny brass and elegant marble surfaces across its mid-century-influenced interiors.  

Upstairs, it’s a chic speakeasy with futuristic touches: There’s a cooling system under the bar that keeps glasses frosty. Downstairs, along the “staff-only” corridors and beyond a false wall, is a completely different area splashed with graffiti, where R&B plays all night.  

From bar director Eric Van Beek’s carefully crafted drinks list, try the unusual mutter Mushroom Old Fashioned that contains and is served with enoki mushrooms, or the curiously tropical and savory Mexi-Thai that combines tequila with makrut lime, coconut, basil oil and tomato. 

Evans & Peel

London 

This bar in London’s Chelsea neighborhood fully leans into its detective agency theme, and guests can even submit their “case” to the Evans & Peel team for personalized service upon arrival.  

Inside, an old-school vibe is created by exposed brickwork, dim lighting and details such as liquor bottles displayed in glass vitrines like evidence exhibits, as well as a large storage file cabinet for all of the agency’s case records.  

Guests are treated to a program of live music and the menu—which is designed to look like a detective’s notebook—features drinks named after infamous moonshiners, bootleggers, bandits and “special cases.” But ask for the World’s Best Old Fashioned, an off-menu option that absolutely lives up to its name. 

A10

Tokyo 

Tokyo is full of hidden watering holes, but A10 is a favorite for both its sultry interiors and unique cocktails. This dark, sophisticated locale features hundreds of records stacked on a grid of shelves behind the bar, comfortable caramel-colored leather lounge chairs, wood and terrazzo flooring and a fritted glass wall that disguises the seating area from the entrance.  

A10’s inventive drinks are all artfully presented, in a variety of vessels and with unusual garnishes. For example, the Forest Apple is a gin-based cocktail that comes topped with cucumber bubbles, and the popcorn-forward Feel Like A Cinema is served inside a box you might get at the movies. 

Tigre

New York City 

This relatively new destination on New York City’s Lower East Side has quickly become a hotspot, thanks to its golden interiors and soft lighting that bathe its chic crowd in a warm, flattering glow. Its expansive martini menu, which encourages orders by ratio of spirits, is also a hit.  

The intimate space can be found behind a graffitied and wheat-pasted doorway on Rivington Street, through a long, dimly lit corridor and past several display niches and a coat check.

In the main space, which has a sexy ’70s glam vibe, a horseshoe-shaped bar is illuminated from underneath and boasts glass shelves stacked with liquor bottles. Comfy patterned booths line either side of the room. Naturally, there’s a mirrored ceiling, and even the satin staff uniforms are on-brand.  

It would be remiss not to order a martini here, whichever way you prefer it served, but the Cigarette Martini—mixed with Truman vodka and a juniper spirit from Copenhagen’s Empirical—is a good place to start if you’re unsure. 

You May Also Like: An NYC Cocktail for Every Borough 

Florería Atlantico

Buenos Aires 

A charming flower and wine shop provides the front for this bar in the Argentinian capital’s Retiro neighborhood, where a refrigerator door opens to reveal the entrance to a subterranean chamber.  

Ever-popular with locals (always a good sign), the cave-like venue was devised by top mixologist Renato Giovannoni and restaurateur Julián Diaz, who decided to hide the bar due to noise complaints from neighbors about a previous nightspot at the location.  

The cavernous space features a gently curved bar along one side and a series of two- and four-top tables along the other, with exposed concrete beams and hand-painted wall murals adding to the underground vibe.  

When it comes to drinks, Giovannoni’s menu pays tribute to the Indigenous tribes and peoples of Argentina as well as the immigrants who've made the country their home. The vodka-based Bissap, based on Senegalese flavors, includes caramelized tomatoes and the Korean-inspired Mayak combines soju with ginger and licorice. 

1930

Milan 

Founded in 2013, this underground bar is well-known but remains elusive. Befriending its owners, who also run the Mag Cafe in Milan’s Navigli neighborhood, offers the best chance of access.  

Requiring a passcode to gain entry at an undisclosed address, the dimly lit space is a true reflection of Prohibition-era speakeasies, with vintage 1930s decor to match the mood. Low ceilings, exposed brickwork, patterned wallpaper and old typewriters all help to transport guests back in time.  

An elaborate drink list is renewed cyclically, so it’s hard to pick favorites. But you can’t go wrong with a Milanese classic: The Negroni. 

Our Bar Coverage

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• To access some of the world's most remote bars, you may have to hike through the wilderness, journey by boat or even ride a yak.
  
• Before Stonewall, there was Julius, New York City's oldest gay bar.

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The post Speakeasies Aren’t Secret Anymore—But That’s Beside the Point at These Extravagant Spots appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.