Bryce Wiatrak

“As a group, Sonoma cabernets tend to be overlooked—an indignity, and it needs to go,” wrote the wine columnist Frank Prial in a 2000 New York Times article. I could not agree more. Cabernet Sauvignon is rarely an underdog. After al...

Wine lovers often marvel at the tremendous versatility of Chardonnay. Ever the chameleon, Chardonnay gives us such disparate entities as Montrachet and Champagne; steely Chablis and buttery California examples; hordes of supermarket bottlings and a h...

“Imagine Musigny like a big lake. It’s a large, luminous, and deep lake. A lake that includes Amoureuses, by the way, that includes also most of the premiers crus, but that doesn’t include Bonnes Mares. Bonnes Mares is at the edge o...

Chianti Classico is the first wine I truly loved. In the summer before my junior year of college, I spent two months studying opera in Arezzo, just east of the appellation’s edge. On that trip, I visited my very first winery, San Felice, where ...

Where do wine regions come from? The question might seem overly simplistic, yet every region has an origin story. While the Old World has several orders of monks—or perhaps Roman soldiers, or maybe Phoenician traders—to thank for the prol...

“Today’s a Landonne day,” Philippe Guigal says to me with boyish delight. As he reiterates later, Landonne was his vineyard. “I was born in January 1975, and Landonne has been planted in January 1975,” he explains. Phili...

In an 1840 speech to the Illinois House of Representatives, of which he was then a congressman, Abraham Lincoln argued, “Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes b...

Late one evening a few years ago, I stumbled across a question in some dark corner of an online wine forum. “Can you name 100 grapes that you’ve tasted?” the user asked the oenophilic interwebs. There was even a whole organization, ...

GuildSomm Staff Writer Bryce Wiatrak considers Sauvignon Blanc's successes and challenges in the New World regions of Napa Valley and New Zealand.

Staff Writer Bryce Wiatrak considers the bourbon boom and the developments and challenges that have emerged in the 10 years since.

Bryce Wiatrak interviews Marilisa Allegrini, Erwan Faiveley, Maya Dalla Valle, and José Lovaglio Balbo about the advantages, challenges, and sacrifices of keeping wineries in family hands.

Staff Writer Bryce Wiatrak explores the Cartizze vineyard and the unique place it holds within the category of Prosecco.

Bryce Wiatrak considers Seyssuel, a region just north of Côte Rôtie, outlining its history, modern resurgence, and quest for AOP status.

GuildSomm Staff Writer Bryce Wiatrak explores the historic dessert wine regions of the Douro Valley, Tokaj, Sauternes, and Pantelleria, where dry wine sister categories now flourish as well.

“The problem with rosé is you’re asking too many things that are different,” Daniel Ravier, winemaker at Bandol’s esteemed Domaine Tempier, says. The wine must be “fresh, but not too acidic; round, but not too muc...

Bryce Wiatrak discusses five ways in which typical categorization of Rioja and Ribera del Duero producers as either traditional or modern ignores important nuances within the regions.

Amarone's unique profile can pose a challenge to beverage directors looking to incorporate it into their programs. But the diversity of expressions bottled by Valpolicella’s top producers also creates a breadth of opportunities.