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More than seven months have passed since Rudy Kurniawan became the first person to be convicted of wine fraud in the U.S.

The story first broke in December 2009, when my friends and colleagues Peter Hellman and Mitch Frank began reporting it for Wine Spectator.

(Here's the Rudy Kurniawan entry on Wikipedia.)

Earlier this week, New Yorker magazine psychology and science blogger Maria Konnikova published a post devoted to "what we really taste when we taste wine."

The post was inspired by a recent "live-action" experiment by Columbia University neuroscientist Daniel Salzman.

We are sad to report that a high number of vineyards have been damaged by a string of hailstorms over the last few weeks in Europe.

The worst came in late June, when a terrible storm literally decimated the Côte de Beaune in Burgundy (see this post by Wine Spectator editor Bruce Sanderson).

Damage estimates that have been circulating on social media and in closed email lists put the numbers as high as 90-100 percent lost crop in certain areas of Burgundy.

"Make no mistake," wrote the New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov (one of our favorite American wine writers) in late 2013. "An American cider renaissance is well underway."

azienda, landed property, estate, domestic work, from the Spanish hacienda, from the Latin facienda meaning things to be done from facere, to do.

The term azienda means business and is used to denote a company or firm in Italian. An azienda agricola is a farming business; an azienda vinicola is a winery (awine business).

When Boulder Wine Merchant owner and Master Sommelier Brett Zimmerman and I chatted the other day about why you should trust your sommelier, he made an observation that struck me for its sheer brilliance and simplicity.

"One of ways that the sommelier makes your dining experience better," he said, "is that — if you let she or he chose the wine for you — you can spend more time talking to your dinner companion, whether a first date, a spouse, or an old friend."

In case you're not familiar with the Coravin, it's a tool that allows wine professionals to extract wine from a bottle without breaking its seal or removing the cork. The device itself is a high-tech syringe that's inserted into the bottle through the cork. Because it doesn't allow any air to enter the bottle, the fitness of the remaining wine is not compromised.

Danny Meyer, Jonathan Waxman, Jacques & Claudine Pépin, Marcus Samuelsson... Reading the schedule of events and seminars for the first day of the Aspen Food & Wine Classic (June 20-22) is like reading a who's who of America's leading chefs and food personalities.