Christy Canterbury MW

Wine and cheese pair like salt and pepper, peas in a pod…the list of duos could go on and on.
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Garnacha didn’t stray from its birthplace in Aragon for a long time. The first known mention of Garnacha dates back to 1513, and it is believed to have been widely planted in northeastern Spain by the 12th century. Yet, it wasn’t until the 18th century that it sailed for foreign...
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Two wines – one a style, one a grape – have been inadvertently vying to fill glasses in the last decade. I write inadvertently because Riesling waged a full-on crusade to get into consumers glasses. But, rosé – without a formal campaign – stole Riesling’s turf.
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Thomas Jefferson, a founding father and the third President of the USA, said, “By making this wine vine known to the public, I have rendered my country as great a service as if I had enabled it to pay back the national debt.” (He did the first but couldn’t manage the latter....
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In the USA, sparkling wine has gone from being a wine unique to celebrations to a wine of more frequent – if not everyday – consumption. It is, after all, telling that 40% of US sparkling wine sales happen in the fourth quarter.
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It’s an odd thing when heritage becomes boring. The USA is so young that it doesn’t have a lot of history, at least in comparison to Europe. And for the USA, Europe is where the comparison starts, especially on the East Coast, where I am based. Today, while we revere and even...
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I’ve just returned from a week in Bordeaux, tasting the 2015 en primeurs wines. Every time I taste Bordeaux reds – or Spain’s Mas La Plana or Super Tuscans or Avincis’ Cuvée Andrei from Romania, I marvel how different Cabernet Sauvignon’s expression is on the two sides of the...
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Fifty years ago, Oregon’s modern wine industry began shaping up. Surprisingly, the first vines planted were not in the Willamette (spirited locals will tell you to pronounce it Wil-LAM-it, “like ‘Damn it.’”) Valley, but rather in Southern Oregon. Yet it was the northern...
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To date, “international varieties” come exclusively from France. However, this troup of classics soon may be joined by an outsider from the Iberian Peninsula. Relatively unknown outside Spain until now, Tempranillo is gaining traction in vineyards around the globe.  So,...
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