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Remember the old days when ordering a bottle of wine filled you with dread? Back when a tuxedoed waiter would look down his nose and shudder at you for ordering a dry white with your ribeye. Or a bold red with your whitefish? Well, drink up! Those days are gone, my friend.

A recent survey finds 90% of Americans care more about drinking what they like over what's 'right.'

Before starting Coiled Wines, winemaker Leslie Preston's life was going down an entirely different path. "I was in grad school at University of California, Davis and my plan was to be a professor and teach French literature," she recalls. What she didn't know at the time, soon her students would be the ones instructing her — lessons that would change the entire course of her life.

These stay-at-home date night ideas are so good, you may never leave the house again.

Jovinea – pronounced joe-vinh-Ā-uh (with a long "a," not a long "e") – of Jovinea Cellars, is a combination of two words. The first is "jovial," meaning cheerful and friendly. The second is "Vinea," which is Latin for "Vine." When put together, you get the full meaning of one of the newest wineries in the Lewis-Clark Valley AVA: joy flows from wine.

Holiday shopping can be stressful — especially for the ones who seem to have everything. But we know a secret: you can't go wrong with wine. For one thing, giving wine is easy. You don’t need to know the difference between a Beaujolais and a Grenache.

At the most basic level, it's just choosing between red and white (and sometimes pink). Secondly, there's an almost endless stream of wine-adjacent gift ideas (like food, totes, glasses and more) floating out there. All you have to do is find them.

If you had to sum up Split Rail Winery in a word, chances are "wacky" wouldn't be the first one to come to mind. But if you're Jed Glavin, Split Rail's owner and winemaker, it's exactly the word you'd use. In fact, it's a word he uses a lot when discussing wine, grapes, winemaking and life in general.

The canopy has been set. The vines have been pruned. The grapes have been watered (and dried out). Now, comes the moment of truth. It's Harvest, the most anticipated and exciting time of year for winemakers and wine tasters alike. After months of hanging on the vine, the grapes are brought inside and winemakers finally get to see, and taste, the fruits of their labor.

Her name was Irene.

She is the great grandmother and muse of Coco Umiker, co-owner, along with her husband, Karl, and head winemaker at Clearwater Canyon Cellars.

The new gold standard

COVID-19 has spoiled so many events in 2020, but it couldn’t stop the Idaho Wine Competition from proceeding on a hot and sunny day in the middle of August. That’s not to say its presence wasn’t felt. For the 11^th edition of the event hosted by Great Northwest Wine, the judges were respectfully spaced at least six feet apart from one another, per social distancing safety guidelines, at Koenig Vineyards in Caldwell, Idaho.

When we caught up to Gig Leadbetter, co-owner and lead cidermaker at Meriwether Cider Co, his entire clan had just returned from a week of camping, hiking, bicycling (you name it!) on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.

It was a vacation worthy of the firefighter-cum-college professor-cum-cidermaker, whose company motto “To adventures big and small” is printed on every bottle and can.