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Wine stories
A new story from the world of wine every day: history, people, places and curious facts, each with its sources.
Veuve Clicquot: the Widow Who Made Champagne Crystal Clear
Widowed at 27, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin built a Champagne empire, traded through Napoleon's wars and helped invent the riddling rack that made the wine crystal clear.
The Speyer Wine Bottle: The Roman Wine Nobody Dares to Open
Sealed around AD 325 and buried with a Roman couple, the Speyer bottle still holds liquid after some 1,700 years, and its museum has never dared to pull the cork.
Cabernet Sauvignon's Parents: How DNA Solved a Wine Mystery
For centuries nobody knew where the world's most famous red grape came from. In 1996 two UC Davis scientists ran a DNA test and found a surprising pair of parents.
The Judgment of Paris: the day California beat France
In 1976 a blind tasting in a Paris hotel put two little-known Napa Valley wines above the best of Bordeaux and Burgundy, and changed how the world thinks about wine.
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