Grape Collective Online Wine Magazine | Winemakers| Wine News | Wine Reviews | Learn About Wine

Black Wine Businesses Are Cultivating Their Communities "Over the past two years, we and others have written a great deal about the wine industry finally embracing diversity. Hanging over that, however, has been an uncomfortable question: Is this real, or is it just talk?" Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher

Cooper Mountain Vineyards is a winery ahead of the curve in the Willamette Valley, being certified organic since the early '90s.  Barbara Gross, co-owner and operator, sat down to speak with me about growing up on a Willamette vineyard, finding her place among the vines, and maintaining the spirit of the vineyard through the good times and the bad. 

For many years now, Tasca has been committed to Sicilian wine production, a leading example for family-fun wineries to take themselves to commercial heights, with the laudation around the world. 

The new year is always a good time to look forward as well as back and with Rosh Hashanah coming early this year, we thought we’d check in with Eli Ben-Zaken, one of Israel’s most revered winemakers. At a time when vintners across the globe have faced enormous challenges, he seems to have seen it all: war, heat, fires, climate change and COVID. What we wanted to know is: How does anyone stay optimistic anymore?

Justin talks to us about his most adventurous project to date and what it means to 'tread lightly' on your own home turf. 

The science is there. “Scientists say the Long Island of the future will have shorter, wetter winters and oppressively hot summers, with seas rising and storm surges so strong they will threaten beaches, salt water marshes and infrastructure." Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher on the issues for New York winemakers as it relates to climage change.

"The grey market is incredibly important. Distributors used to have older wine but then all of a sudden things changed and they’re just selling current releases, and if they’re selling “library wine,” wine that’s been aged at the estate, you’re buying at an outrageous markup. Obviously the provenance is going to be perfect, but it’s a huge markup and if you’re a restaurant you’ve got to make money on your wine list. You want to price it where it’s attractive enough that somebody’s actually going to buy the wine." -Charles Puglia

Grape Collective talked to Maddalena Pasqua di Bisceglie of Musella in Valpolicella about her natural approach to winemaking including some unusual methods such as placing speakers in the vineyards to play music to the vines and discusses the dragon which lives amongst them in the forest.