Wine Culture

Mudgee is the third-largest wine region in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Mudgee got its unusual name from its original residents, the Wiradjuri Aborigines, but it got its start in wine production thanks to a group of 19th-century German settlers who came to Australia with winemaking expertise.

The country of Turkey, then known as Anatolia, began producing wine six thousand years ago. There are exhibits of this early wine industry dating back to 4,000 B.C. in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. The ancient word for wine by this pre-Hittite civilization was actually Vino. Today, Turkish wines fly under the radar of most people and most wine lovers.

Visit DanAykroydWines.com Whether you know him from Saturday Night Live , the Blues Brothers , Ghostbusters or the myriad films in which he has appeared, Dan Aykroyd’s DNA is found throughout the blueprint of pop culture. Now, three decades after exploding onto the scene as an SNL cast member, he has turned his attention to winemaking with the launch of Dan Aykroyd Wines . IntoWine recently caught up with Dan to learn more about his wine venture. What first got you into wine? I really got interested in wine when I started working on Saturday Night Live. Up to that point my level of sophistication was mostly drinking Mateus Rose to impress various young ladies on dates or back at their place, if I was lucky. However Steve Cropper the legendary blues musician who played in the Blues Brothers band and on the show took me under his wing and taught me a lot about wine. He was the one who introduced me to Grand Cru Bordeaux and Burgundy and the wonderful big reds of California. While he’s the one who got me started it was really my friend Issac Tigrett who was one of the founders of the House of Blues who gave me my graduate course in fine wine.

Virginia is well known for its revolutionary and Civil War history. One of the original 13 colonies, it’s practically the birthplace of the U.S. It’s less known however for the 150 wineries which dot the landscape, turning out respectable wines since the days of the founding fathers.

Wines from the Rhone Valley in France can be great values especially those wines labeled Cotes du Rhone. Cotes du Rhone is an AOC wine whose territory extends over the Rhone Valley from Vienne in the north to Avignon in the south. Cote means hillside and Rhone is the famous river that runs thru southeastern France. The AOC spans across areas in both the northern and southern Rhone Valleys. Cotes du Rhone is often referred to as a generic appellation because it is the lowest level of AOC wines and covers such a large area. All though not the subject of this article, the AOC Cotes du Rhone Villages allows for “better” wines coming from one of the allowed villages. These will be explored in a future article.

Barossa Valley is the best-known and, arguably, most important wine region in Australia. Any discussion of top Australian wineries or innovative winemakers will inevitably include some of the top names from Barossa Valley. The region is blessed with a wide variety of soils and a long history of family winemaking. At some Barossa Valley wineries, you can go back five or six generations to the area's original German-speaking settlers, ancestors of today's growers and winemakers. Barossa Valley's unique heritage is reflected in its top-quality wines, which come not only from large, long-established wineries but also from a new generation of boutique winemakers.