The Daily Decant

Xinomavro is the red grape of northern Greece that serious wine writers have compared to Nebbiolo, producing wines of extraordinary structure, acidity, and longevity from the mountain appellations of Naoussa and Amyndeon. Today's episode covers the distinctive flavor profile, dried tomato, rose petal, dark cherry, black olive, the two main appellations and their stylistic differences, and the...

Santorini's vineyards are unlike any other on earth: ancient, ungrafted vines coiled into basket shapes low to the volcanic ground, surviving winds and drought that would defeat any conventional trellising system. The wine they produce — Assyrtiko — is bone dry, intensely mineral, searing with acidity, and tasting of the volcanic island itself. Today's episode covers the full Santorini s...

I sat down with Jaime Gillespie, the creator behind the popular wine tips and travel platform Somm.ish, for a wide-ranging conversation about where wine culture is headed, the destinations that are reshaping how she thinks about wine, and the journey that brought her into the wine world in the first place. We cover the trends actually worth paying attention to right now, the travel experiences tha...

Six episodes, four major wine categories, and one central argument: fortified wines are not old-fashioned, not just for special occasions, and not adequately recognized for the complexity and craftsmanship they represent. Sunday's wrap-up brings Port and Fortified Wines Week together with the full recap, a personal top five across all the wines covered, the three-sentence cheat sheet, and a l...

One of the most common barriers to buying fortified wine is not knowing what to do with the rest of the bottle after opening. Saturday's practical episode removes that barrier and all others: how long each fortified wine style keeps after opening, the specific serving temperatures for each style, the producers worth knowing by name across Port, Sherry, Madeira, and vermouth, value picks at ev...

Beyond Port, Sherry, and Madeira lies a broader world of fortified wines that most wine drinkers either don't know exist or know only in the wrong context. Today's episode covers vermouth as a serious, complex fortified wine worthy of drinking on its own rather than just as a cocktail component, Vergine Marsala as the real version of a wine most people know only as a cooking ingredient,...

Madeira is the most unusual wine in the world, a fortified wine from a Portuguese volcanic island in the Atlantic that improves rather than deteriorates when exposed to heat, oxygen, and time, producing bottles from the 18th and 19th centuries that are still alive and compelling today. Today's episode covers the discovery of Madeira's extraordinary stability during long sea voyages, the...

Sherry is the most stylistically diverse wine in the world: from bone-dry, pale, saline Fino through the nutty complexity of Amontillado and Oloroso to the syrupy sweetness of Pedro Ximénez. Today's episode covers the complete Sherry spectrum, the unique phenomenon of flor yeast that defines the dry styles, the solera blending system that creates Sherry's remarkable consistency, and how...

Port is made in one of the world's most dramatic wine regions, from a blend of indigenous Portuguese varieties, through a process of arrested fermentation that creates the characteristic sweetness before years of aging in the lodges of Vila Nova de Gaia. Today's episode covers the full Port style spectrum from entry-level Ruby through LBV, the magnificent range of aged Tawnies, and the p...

Fortified wine wasn't invented for complexity or pleasure, it was invented for survival, as a practical solution to the problem of wine spoiling on long sea voyages. Today's episode covers the science of fortification, the historical context that drove its development, and how the practical techniques developed to keep wine stable accidentally produced some of the most complex and age-wo...

Six episodes, one week, one honest account of what it feels like to take a formal wine exam after 160-plus episodes of wine podcasting. Sunday's wrap-up brings WSET Level 1 Week together with the full recap, my honest verdict on the qualification and what it does and doesn't offer, practical recommendations for anyone considering formal wine education, and a look ahead at what's com...

A wine qualification provides a framework. What fills that framework is a set of specific, sustained habits that the course itself doesn't have time to build. Saturday's episode covers the practical tools that make the most difference after formal wine education: the wine journal habit that builds a personal palate reference faster than anything else, the books worth reading at this stag...

WSET Level 1 is a genuinely valuable qualification with real limits. Today's episode covers what the curriculum doesn't address: vintage variation, producer reputation, natural wine, the economics of wine: explains the full WSET pathway from Level 1 through the Diploma and Master of Wine, and gives my honest assessment of whether pursuing formal wine education is worth it for someone who...

The WSET Level 1 section on storing, serving, and pairing wine is the most immediately practical part of the curriculum, and the part I was most dismissive of going in. Today's episode covers the specific serving temperature ranges for different wine styles, the principles of glassware, the five storage conditions that affect wine quality, and the food matching framework the WSET curriculum t...

The WSET Systematic Approach to Tasting, the SAT, is the formal tasting methodology that WSET uses across all its qualification levels. Today's episode covers the full SAT: appearance, nose, palate, and conclusions, with every sub-category explained. More personally, I reflect on what it felt like to apply this framework formally in an exam context after years of more casual tasting, and what...

WSET Level 1's most lasting contribution is not any individual fact about a grape or region, it's the geographic and stylistic framework it provides for organizing wine knowledge. Today's episode covers how the WSET Level 1 curriculum maps the wine world, the Old World versus New World organizing principle, the style framework that allows beginners to navigate a wine list when they...

Last week, after 160-plus episodes of The Daily Decant, Lauren sat the WSET Level 1 Award in Wines, the entry-level qualification from the world's most widely recognized wine education body. Today's episode tells the personal story: why I decided to do it, what the test was actually like, what surprised me, and what I took away from the experience of having conversational wine knowledge...

Six episodes, three thousand years of history, one grape, and a region that has managed to be simultaneously the most traditional and the most rebellious wine culture in Italy. Sunday's wrap-up brings Tuscany Week together with the full recap, a personal top five across all the wines covered, the three-sentence cheat sheet, and a look ahead at what's coming next on The Daily Decant.

Tuscany's price range is enormous — from fifteen-dollar Morellino to three-hundred-dollar Brunello Riserva — and buying intelligently requires knowing the DOCG hierarchy, the vintages worth prioritizing, and the specific producers to trust at every price point. Saturday's practical episode consolidates the week into a complete buying framework: the DOCG value hierarchy, the best recent v...

Tuscany's wine identity is almost entirely defined by three zones — Chianti Classico, Brunello di Montalcino, and the Super Tuscan Bolgheri coast. But Tuscany has a dozen wine zones of real quality, most offering better value than the famous names. Today's episode covers the underrated rest: Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, the Noble Wine since the 1600s; Morellino di Scansano in the emergi...

We touched on the Super Tuscan story during Cabernet week. Today we go much deeper — covering the full arc from Sassicaia's accidental origins in the 1940s through the Antinori family's deliberate creation of Tignanello in 1971, the establishment of Ornellaia on the Bolgheri coast, the legal battles and eventual regulatory accommodation that followed, and the broader impact on all of Ita...

Brunello di Montalcino was essentially invented by a single family in the 1880s, spent a century in relative obscurity, and is now recognized as one of the greatest and most age-worthy red wines produced anywhere on earth. Today's episode tells the Biondi-Santi story in full, covers what makes Montalcino's combination of elevation, soils, and climate so uniquely suited to Sangiovese, exp...

Chianti's reputation spent most of the twentieth century in the gutter, associated with cheap wine in straw-covered bottles made for volume rather than quality. The recovery of Chianti Classico, the historic heartland zone between Florence and Siena, is one of the most remarkable rehabilitation stories in wine. Today's episode covers the Black Rooster designation, the three-tier quality...

Tuscany has appeared throughout this show's run as a supporting character: in Cabernet week, Merlot week, the Everyday Drinker. This week it gets its own full treatment. Today's episode covers the three thousand years of Tuscan wine history, the geography and soils that make the region uniquely suited to its dominant grape, the Sangiovese variety itself and what makes it both difficult a...

Six episodes, two thousand years of wine history, and one grape that the world's most serious sommeliers drink privately more than almost anything else. Sunday's wrap-up brings Germany and Riesling Week together with the full recap, a personal top five, the three-sentence cheat sheet, and a look ahead at what's coming next on The Daily Decant.