The shift from winter to spring is easily the most anticipated change of season in any given year.

The 2008 Castle Rock Mendocino County Pinot Noir is something of an anomaly. For a wine that offers such delights to the palate, it offers very little to the nose.

The same natural chemistry that makes asparagus so notoriously hard to pair with wines also gives it a fresh grassy flavor that makes it an excellent match for so many foods.

A grape-eating moth in Napa County has prompted a quarantine that will regulate the shipment of fruit and some plants in the heart of the state's premier wine region.

Vintage variation is a fact of life in any cool-climate region, including the Finger Lakes.

In this cool, fertile wine growing county in Northern California, grape growers are stomping mad at a new plan to limit the amount of water vineyards can pump from local rivers and streams to protect their crops from frost -- a draft regulation meant to safeguard coho salmon, a species on the brink of extinction here.

Light to moderate alcohol consumption, especially red wine, is not only good for a woman's heart, it's also good for her waistline, according to a recent American study.

The highest point of Monte Bello, around 2,700 feet. Last week brought a celebration of Ridge Vineyards' 50th anniversary atop the Monte Bello ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains - and, as it happens, also a chance to acknowledge Paul Draper's 40 years of service as winemaker, presiding over some of California's defining wines.

Published: Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 8:43 p.m. Last Modified: Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 8:43 p.m. There still was champagne and plenty of haute cuisine.

The wine glut has hit South Australia's boutique regions this vintage. Growers in the Clare Valley, who are renowned for growing quality riesling grapes, are being offered just $300 a tonne for any uncontracted fruit.

Sheldrake Point Vineyard will celebrate the 'Ices of March' Saturday, March 13. Participants will compare and contrast, past, present and future releases and learn how the growing season and the grapes change the wine each year.

Published: Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 8:07 p.m. Last Modified: Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 8:07 p.m. The Wine Road Barrel Tasting was a Spring rite of passage Saturday for droves of millennials, the offspring of the baby boomers who immersed themselves in the wine culture - barrel samples, mustard fields and limousines.

Farmhand Agatha Redekop walks down a strip of a vineyard while harvesting grapes for View Point Winery in Colchester, Ont.

An accidental double labeled bottle of Champagne is displayed at the Accidental Wine warehouse.

KENNEWICK, Wa;--Prosser-based Canyon's Edge Winery is opening a new tasting room and bistro at Southridge Village in Kennewick.

Some big names in the Northwest wine industry have been quarreling publicly - online.

I recently wrote that good wine restaurants should provide decent wine glasses with their wines.

The Great Dane Pub and Brewery just released the highest-alcohol beer it has ever made.

Nunavut politician seeks to ban sale of EU booze Meeka Mike eats fresh seal meat during a polar-bear hunt on Frobisher Bay near Tonglait, Nunavut, in this 2003 file photo.

Earthquake damage to the Chilean wine industry is not nearly as bad as feared, the country's biggest producers say.