What you want: A holiday get-together with friends over a cheering glass of wine. What you don’t want: A budget deeper in the red than an old vine zin. The answer may be in the box. Once the runt of the wine world, boxed wines have come a long way, says Natalie MacLean, author of [...]

A Magnum-Sized Resume Natalie MacLean is more than just an accredited sommelier; she’s a wine writer, speaker, wine judge, and publisher of one of the largest wine newsletters on the Internet. “I’ve been writing about wine for 10 years,” says MacLean, “I love the ‘research’ aspect of my job and am very thorough about it.” [...]

Excerpted from the New York Times Shopping for wine is a lot like parenting a teenager. You feel stupid when you’re in the middle of it, and when you finally emerge, you’re desperately ready for a drink. There is, alas, no app for raising teenagers. But mobile software developers have begun aiming at oenophiles, and [...]

We asked sommelier, writer, and four-time Beard Award winner Natalie MacLean to tell us her favorite summertime wines that don’t cost an arm and a leg. Best Patio Sipper: Ca’ Del Solo Vineyard Muscat 2007 (Monterey, CA): Medium-bodied and slightly off-dry white. About $17. Best Poolside Chiller: Nobilo Regional Collection Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2006 (New [...]

Buy now, drink later Prices for great wine are soaring. But by ordering tomorrow’s best bottles today, you can ensure you’ll never go thirsty.By Pamela Young If you are passionate about wine, well-supplied with cash, and very, very patient, now may be the right time to stock up on Château Ausone 2005. Ordering this blue-chip [...]

Name: Natalie MacLean Occupation: Nat Decants Wine Newsletter Holiday challenge: “I write about wine so most people expect me to serve fairly pricey wines at holiday gatherings and meals, but I don’t have an unlimited budget.” Holiday tip: “I look for the underpriced wines in the liquor store that taste twice as expensive as they [...]

There’s no question that warehouse clubs offer great prices — for some products, they’re unbeatable. But in other cases, the urge to save could end up costing you. As most penny-pinching consumers know, joining a warehouse club can result in great deals on everything from 46-inch flat-screen TVs to 12-packs of chicken-noodle soup. But that [...]

Forget about having Champagne tastes on a beer-lover’s budget. Costs for almost every step or ingredient used in alcohol production are on the rise, from the price of malting barley for beer to the fuel costs associated with importing foreign wines, says Ilhan Geckil, a senior consultant with Anderson Economic Group, a Chicago-based research firm. [...]

That after-dinner cocktail or glass of wine doesn’t become a healthier habit just because the alcohol involved is organic. Many organic wines and spirits are calculated marketing efforts rather than health and environmental statements, says Jerald O’Kennard, director of Chicago-based reviewing group the Beverage Testing Institute. “There’s a lot of Johnny-come-lately products out there that [...]

His friends may call him a snob, and waitresses may give him odd looks, but David Turley isn’t about to drink a beer with chunks of ice floating in it. But that’s what can happen at restaurants that insist on serving his favorite beverage in icy mugs. And so Turley has no qualms about insisting [...]