Dave McIntyre's WineLine

Autumn arrived in the Mid-Atlantic this week as if it had an appointment on the calendar — the equinox, to be precise. This old-vine Garnacha from Spain was ideal for the cool, rainy weather that has socked us in. But I have hopes for a reprise of summer, so here are some lighter wines as well. My love of underdog regions leads me to a superb rosé from Texas and some delicious wines from Temecula in southern California. And a bonus for paid subscribers: A cellar find from the southern Rhone Valley.

Now that I don’t have to review current release wines every week, I’m trying to explore some of the older bottles that have accumulated in my basement over the years. Some of them are gorgeous. Saucelito Canyon 2012 Zinfandel Estate Arroyo Grande Valley. 14.58 abc. A stellar cellar find. This wine aged beautifully; the years shed any rough-and-tumble brashness of youthful zinfandel and gave it wisdom and elegance.

In my previous post, I recommended two films that explore wine culture. If you want to pry your eyes away from a screen for a few diverting hours, I heartily recommend picking up a copy of Black Odesa, by British novelist Peter Stafford-Bow. (Vinfare, 2026). This is the fifth novel featuring Felix Hart, a protagonist seemingly based on Stafford-Bow’s prior career in the wine trade and his wild imagination, but my first encounter with the series.

Recently, I’ve enjoyed two thoughtful documentaries about wine that go well beyond the usual glamor shots of vineyards and barrels to explore the joys and travails of making wine. I hope you enjoy them. In my next post, I’ll offer a riotous novel poking fun at wine’s pretensions and the chaotic transformation influencer culture is wreaking on wine journalism.

On my first trip to France, in May 1997, my wife and I were traveling through the Rhône Valley with my cousin Susan and her husband, Ken. We were on one of those leisurely vacations without a schedule, just a map, a copy of the Guide Michelin, and my heavily dog-eared Food Lover’s Guide to France by Patricia Wells. Driving up the N7 late one afternoon, we neared Tain l’Hermitage and spotted a neon hotel sign across the river, its welcoming light beckoning us through the growing twilight.

This article appeared in the April/May 2026 issue of The SOMM Journal. Chile’s viticultural map is framed by the Pacific Ocean and its cool Humboldt Current, the Andes, and the Atacama Desert, creating conditions radically different from one valley to the next. Viña Carmen has staked its identity on exploring that diversity through its Carmen Gran Reserva line of wines. Founded in 1850, Viña Carmen is one of the oldest wineries in South America and a pillar of Chilean wine history.

Part 2 of 2 In my previous post, I wrote about disease-resistant, cold-hardy hybrid grape varieties Melissa and Parker Aellen are tending in their family’s experimental vineyard in central Maryland for their label Simple Theory Wine Co. The vineyard showed promise because the vines, only in their second leaf, survived the April 21 freeze that killed a lot of vines outright throughout the Mid-Atlantic, including at the Aellens’ primary vineyard, Linganore Winecellars.

These vines should not have been alive. Only in their second leaf, they should have been vulnerable to the April 21 freeze that devastated vineyards and orchards throughout the Mid-Atlantic. Yet they looked healthy, extending straight up from their cardboard tubes, tendrils stretching in search of the mid-summer sun. Parker Aellen found a Monarch vine with a small cluster of black grapes and offered berries to me and his cousin, Melissa Aellen.

Some thought-provoking and thirst-inducing articles about wine. Climate change means grapes need sunscreen. And which generation isn’t drinking wine? Leave it to the dons of Oxford1 to highlight the economic and social contributions of bars and pubs.

In 2015, Pepe Raventós was riding his motorcycle along mountain roads near the Penedes coast, in an area called Costers del Montmell, when he spotted an abandoned vineyard on a hillside. Before long, he had purchased the property and set out revitalizing the remaining old, bush-trained vines. Raventós, known for making some of Spain’s best sparkling wines at Raventós i Blanc, started making high-elevation, natural still and sparkling wines he calls Can Sumoi.