The owners of La Tour d’Argent, the legendary Parisian restaurant and Wine Spectator Grand Award winner, filed a complaint with police last week following an inventory taken of their extensive wine collection. More than 80 bottles, worth $1.63 million (€1.5 million), are missing from the cellar, including bottles from Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. There
Month: January 2024
Who’s behind it: For years, chef and restaurateur Rick Tramonto impressed Chicagoans and visitors at Tru, which earned a Wine Spectator Grand Award in 2004. Tramonto left in 2010, and the restaurant’s owner, the Lettuce Entertain You hospitality group, closed Tru in 2017. Since 2022, Tramonto, the author of several books and cookbooks, including 2011’s
For the first time in nearly four years, Australian winemakers see signs of hope in their relationship with one of their biggest export markets. The Chinese government is reviewing painful tariffs of well over 100 percent on Australian wine that it implemented in 2020 after a political spat with Australia’s government. If it follows through
What better education could a wine lover ask for than the chance to work and study in Burgundy? The Roots Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping minorities enter the wine industry, is now accepting applications for its “Rooted in France” scholarship, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for ambitious BIPOC graduating college seniors who wish to dive
Perhaps no European wine nation has been hit as hard by climate change this decade as Spain. Last year raised the stakes: January through April of 2023 brought the driest start to a year on the Iberian peninsula since the 1960s, and winemakers across the nation battled to save the vintage. Catalonia and Andalusia were
It’s probably not what Rudolf Steiner imagined. At Oregon State University, researchers are pairing cutting-edge technology with organic, sustainable and biodynamic agriculture to create their most recent invention: the “Pied Piper.” The prototype is a robot designed to naturally disrupt the mating of vineyard pests such as treehoppers and stink bugs through the use of
Last year, the return to post-pandemic normalcy meant tantalizing new dining options sprouted seemingly everywhere, while existing restaurants reinvigorated themselves, and their wine lists benefitted from a push for diversity in styles and price points. Wine Spectator’s top dining articles of 2023 reflect our readers’ desire for the accessible and the exciting, from a list
Who’s behind it: On the heels of Pastis Miami’s opening, restaurateurs Stephen Starr and Keith McNally are bringing French bistro concept Pastis to the nation’s capital. It joins the acclaimed Starr Restaurants portfolio, which includes Wine Spectator Award of Excellence winner Pastis in Manhattan, as well as Restaurant Award winners Le Zoo in Bar Harbor,
On Jan. 12, Gracious Hospitality Management (GHM), the group behind Cote Korean Steakhouse, is opening its latest restaurant, Coqodaq, which will offer a fine-dining take on wildly popular Korean fried chicken. Ambitiously, the restaurant’s team also plans to build the largest Champagne program in the United States. A project four years in the making, Coqodaq
The past 12 months have shown the wine industry’s ability to bounce back, with 2023 bringing disasters and scandals, but also fresh faces, promising vintages and comeback stories. The year wasn’t without its fair share of drama—with the collapse of the iconic New York wine shop Sherry-Lehmann and California internet merchant Underground Cellar, and the
While scientists have been researching the links between wine and health for decades, 2023 brought a flurry of new discoveries. Even as one study claimed that alcohol’s potential health benefits may have been overstated by past research, others linked moderate wine consumption to a range of health improvements, gave us a more nuanced understanding of how