Wine Recommendations

Overcooked, battered and abused? No longer. Americans tended to eat less lamb than any other red meat, but consumption has come up bit since younger chefs traveled to discover its intense, interesting flavor and learned the correct way to cook the meat. Finer restaurants have been released from their fears that guests will reject a lamb dish now that it is properly prepared. This influence, coupled with the flood of immigrants who serve lamb as a staple, has greatly increased the popularity of the meat, particularly lamb shanks, in this country.

Spain has more area under vine cultivation than any other country in the world, according to Wines From Spain. While much of Spain's wine production remains in-country, Spain exports wines to many other nations, including the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. Russia and Italy are importing more Spanish wines than ever before.

As the holiday season draws near, those of us responsible for creating menus, decorating the home and preparing special meals begin to worry, perhaps even panic. It's hard enough to choose a crowd-pleasing holiday menu, but when wine-shopping time arrives, it's easy to let stress get the best of you.

In a recent article, I discussed some of the best-known Super Tuscan wines . Tuscany is just one of Italy's world-renowned wine regions; in fact, every region of Italy is capable of producing world-class wines. The passion winemakers bring to the art and science of creating a top-quality wine of distinction is alive and well throughout Italy.

Bordeaux, the world's most famous wine region and France's largest by AOC volume sold [i] , produces many of the best-known wines on Earth. With 60 appellations and over 8,600 growers, Bordeaux exports wines to over 150 countries [ii] . Winemakers around the world strive to emulate the Bordeaux style, carefully blending red wine grapes to produce a wine that reflects the best influences of its terroir.

Super Tuscans are the stuff of legend. Rogue winemaker bucks tradition, breaks rules, creates something new and wonderful and vaults his wine region back onto the world wine stage – it's a fantastic tale. And that's pretty much how things happened.

California's Sonoma County has a near-perfect climate for growing cool-weather grapes. Fog banks that creep over the hillsides from the Pacific Ocean and relatively cloudy weather during key months (Californians call it "June Gloom") make many parts of Sonoma an ideal place to plant pinot noir and chardonnay.