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For sheer drama in winegrowing, look no further than Sicily’s Mount Etna. The volcano’s last major eruption in 1992 unleashed lava flows that buried vineyards and homes. Black smoke and ash from more recent but less serious eruptions have temporarily stopped air traffic. Accompanying earthquakes damaged stone-walled terraces in the vineyards. Nonetheless, intrepid winegrowers on […]

The southern Italian province of Campania offers many famous attractions. The volcano, Mt. Vesuvius, stands brooding over the city of Naples while the ruins of Pompeii recall the dramatic eruption in 79 A.D. The blue Bay of Naples and the precarious, winding cliffs of the Amalfi Coast provide beautiful vistas. And of course, Campania’s diverse,

Festive holiday spirits this year again brought fun opportunities to celebrate by sharing and enjoying delicious sparkling wines. But the best policy is always to have chilled bottles on hand for drinking throughout the year and not just on New Year’s Eve. Now is a particularly good time to go with French sparklers before inventories

After crossing over the majestic Chesapeake Bay Bridge toward sandy seaside shores, you pass bucolic landscapes and picturesque, quiet colonial towns such as Easton, Md. It is hard to imagine the area bustling with bootleggers and rum-runners, but as author Eric Mills describes in “Chesapeake Rumrunners of the Roaring Twenties,” that was exactly the case

Across the globe on the third Thursday in November, wine drinkers celebrate Beaujolais Nouveau Day. But as you drink Beaujolais Nouveau, remember other Beaujolais (pronounced BOH-joh-lay) red wines offer diverse styles that are equally, if not much more, enjoyable. Beaujolais Nouveau offers an opportunity to sip the first new French wines of the most recent

Halloween means handing out candy to the delight of little trick-or-treaters in costumes. But with a little imagination, adults can have fun of their own — costumes optional — by offering delicious, artisan liqueurs with grown-up confectionery delights. Instead of rummaging through your kid’s stash on Halloween night, grab these intriguing treats from France and

What delicious yet versatile wines pair beautifully with autumn delights such as aged cheeses, roasted chestnuts, dried fruit, spice cakes and chocolates? Madeira, an underappreciated fortified wine, probably did not come to mind. But by sipping Madeira, we become of part of a long, storied American tradition. Madeira wines hail from steep volcanic slopes on

This is the second of a two-part series on wines made at the Dr. Konstantin Frank Winery in the Finger Lakes region of New York state. The legacy of Dr. Konstanin Frank, who helped pioneer the development of Finger Lakes wine country as a destination for high-quality wines, is alive and well today. His grandson,