Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

Spring is in full flower - I know this, because I am sneezing continually - and in addition to the burgeoning boughs and all come asparagus, snap peas, watercress, spinach, artichokes, you name it. Basically, everything’s gone green.

With that, if you’re a wine lover, there’s also the question: What wines go best with green vegetables?
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

Everyone knows Pinot Grigio, the northern Italian white wine beloved for its...hmmmm... That’s hard to pin down. Sometimes it seems as though Pinot Grigio is mostly beloved for its lack of presence; a sort of pleasant blandness, like iceberg lettuce or Kenny G's music.
 
So, given that, what happened to Pinot Bianco? Somewhere along the road to grape-variety fame, Grigio’s paler-skinned cousin wandered off into the bushes and got lost. That doesn’t mean there aren’t people making Pinot Bianco; in fact there are many of them, and the wines are often very good. And more to the point, on average they are unquestionably better than most Pinot Grigios.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

When it comes to pink wine, there’s one basic thing to know: White Zinfandel is not the same thing as dry rosé. White Zin - and its various blush-wine brethren - is somewhat sweet; when you think of a White Zin, think of the pink hue of cotton candy, and you won’t be far off, tastewise. Dry rosé, on the other hand, is crisp, zesty and not sweet at all.

Unfortunately, the massive popularity of White Zin over the years did a number on people’s perception of rosés in general, sort of the way Jar Jar Binks corrupted the aesthetic legitimacy of the entire Star Wars universe. Thankfully, just as the doofus horror of J.J.B. has ebbed over time, so has the permeating sense that all rosés are sweet.

In fact, dry rosés are an ideal springtime wine. As far as I’m concerned, they’re meant to be drunk outdoors - whether at a picnic, al fresco at a restaurant, or simply on a porch or in a backyard. The longer, sunnier days ask for something in the glass that you can see through; and the light, berry-to-watermelon fruit notes of most rosés taste like springtime too. So, with that in mind, here are a few great bottles to look for.
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The cash-strapped French government is getting ready to auction some of its fine wines in order to raise money and invest in more modest vintages.

The move comes as governments across Europe look to tighten their belts and tone down displays of lavish spending. Austerity budgets have squeezed living standards for many and left millions out of work.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

What do you do if your Amtrak train stalls for hours en route to Washington, D.C.? Most people probably raise a fist to the skies and curse the god of wayward train mechanisms or what have you, but not Paul Goldschmidt. The winemaker for Bordeaux’s Château Siaura recently found himself in this situation, en route to a tasting he was now certain to miss. So what he did speaks well of mankind, or at least of Bordeaux winemakers: He opened all the bottles and did the tasting for his fellow passengers instead. Who apparently were quite pleased with this outcome - I mean, if you can’t have an on-time arrival, at least you can have good wine.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

Today, I’m told, is Malbec World Day. Why it isn’t World Malbec Day, I don’t know, though certainly the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship must; they, after all, are the ones who came up with it. Nevertheless, “Malbec World” sounds like a department store, and personally, I think that if they wish this celebration to catch on, they ought to reverse it.

That’s where my complaints end, though. I’m entirely happy with Malbec itself, a red grape that first achieved notice in the French regions of Bordeaux (where they largely ditched it after a big frost in 1956 killed off most of the Malbec vines) and Cahors. But French Malbec (or Cot, as it’s sometimes called) can be bruisingly tannic and tough, and it’s Argentina where Malbec has really come into its own.

The grape arrived in 1868, carried over by a French agricultural engineer named Michel Pouget, and now it’s grown on more than 75,000 acres. As well there might be: Argentine Malbec at its best combines vivid black-fruit and spice notes with a firm (but not aggressively tannic) structure. On top of that, there are very good Argentine Malbecs available for modest prices - never a bad thing. Here are five to check out.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

Among various mundane considerations, such as being Tuesday, today also happens to be Winston Churchill Day. Admittedly, W. C. Day isn’t exactly the most well-known commemorative day. It’s definitely way below Earth Day, for instance, which is coming up on the April 22. But I do like to think that it’s got more legs - as it were - than National Dance Like a Chicken Day (May 14). One can only hope.

Regardless, April 9 marks the day that Churchill was made an honorary U.S. citizen. There have been only seven, ever, and only two of those managed to still be alive when they received the honor - our man Winston, and Mother Teresa. Churchill definitely wins over Mother T. when it comes to loving wine. He was particularly known for his fondness for Champagne, hence the famous quote, “Remember, gentlemen, it’s not just France we are fighting for, it’s Champagne!” He also loved good Bordeaux and port.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

You’ve got your ham, or you’ve got your lamb. When it comes to Easter dinner, at least in the U.S., these are the main courses people gravitate toward. But there’s also one other inescapable Easter food: the egg. When the kids amble home from the annual Easter egg hunt and suddenly you’ve got 15 hard-boiled eggs on hand, who cares if they’re covered in colorful stripes and spots? You still have to eat the things, right?

So, looking at it that way, the ideal all-purpose Easter wine should be good with ham and good with lamb and good with eggs. Moreover, it should be festive. And, ideally, not too pricey. That’s a tall order. It’s like looking for fat-free pork belly, or a modest politician.

But for me, there is one answer out there, and it’s sparkling rosé. Sparkling wines tend to work well with salty foods like ham. The richer fruit of a rosé will give it enough substance to go with lamb, and the wine’s acidity (plus the light rasp of the bubbles) makes it one of the few types of wine that go well with eggs.

Rosé sparkling wines are made all over the world these days, or at least all over the winemaking world, and they’ve become increasingly popular in recent years. Here are a few excellent possibilities.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

If there’s one kind of wine in the whole world of wine that’s misunderstood, it’s probably kosher wine. The basic misnomer is that it is somehow different - that the process of making kosher wine differs in some radical way from the process of making regular, un-kosher wine. This idea, mostly, isn’t true.

The short version is this: Grapes are kosher, and there’s nothing about the nature of the winemaking process that makes them not so. What matters is more the who than the how.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

There are plenty of Independence Days around the world. July 4, of course; also July 9, when Argentina exited the Spanish Empire; December 1, when Iceland finally loosed itself from the cruel clutches of the Danes; not to mention August 31, when Kyrgyzstan finally achieved independence from the Soviet Union (though they’re still waiting for the day when someone can actually pronounce the word Kyrgyzstan).

March 2, though, is the most significant of them all: Texas Independence Day. Yes, on this hallowed day in 1836, the Texas Declaration of Independence was signed. It's celebrated by hundreds of millions of people across the globe (well, not quite, but as a Texas native, I certainly feel it ought to be). And thus Texas’s career as a sovereign nation began.
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