I’m picking out wines for my tasting, which has been a pretty fun enterprise. The latest contender is this Mouressipe Cuvée Càcous ($22), from the Languedoc, a huge wine-producing region in southern France.

Sugar is by far the most misunderstood component of wine. There’s a common belief that sweet wine is bad wine, but the truth is, sweetness in wine isn’t always a bad thing, and sometimes can be a very, very nice thing indeed.

My recent post on Madeira got me thinking about acidity, one of the most under-examined aspects of wine — at least from the point of view of the average wine consumer. Admittedly, I am a little bit obsessed with acidity and all things sour.

I always forget about half bottles of wine. They’re like that former colleague who was kind of soft-spoken but stealthily smart and funny, and now every time you run into her you make a tentative coffee date, but then lose her card (again) in the depths of your bag.

Tannins are probably the trickiest thing to understand in wine. All the other structural components – sugar, alcohol, and acidity – are things we encounter regularly in other foods and drink. So what are tannins?

During a 50-hour whirlwind trip to Northern California, I squeezed in a quick trip to Spring Mountain, home to some of my favorite reds.

Even though I’m all about making wine accessible, I have to admit to some inside baseball, wine geek tendencies. One of the geekiest is my love — obsession, really — with Madeira.

I’m about to turn 37 (yikes), and the older I get, the less tolerance I have for bullshit — especially when it comes to restaurants. I was really looking forward to our trip to France as a return to restaurant sanity.

Here’s part of my discussion with Julien Castell, winemaker at Castell-Reynoard in Bandol, talking about vintage variation and why 2009 was a good year for him to create a new wine.

Here’s Sebastian, our helpful (and adorable) tour guide from Château de Pibarnon explaining the history of the vineyard and me providing some translation. And yes, it really was that beautiful.

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