Penfolds Releases Wines Made From American Grapes

Wines from outside Europe are often called New World wines. Penfolds, one of Australia’s premier wineries, is doubling down on being New World with its new California Collection, half of which consists of blends of cabernet sauvignon and shiraz (syrah) from California and Australia. Penfolds has been interested in California since the 1980s, and after…

How to Think About Wine Vintages

Recently I took part in a brief exploration of the Northern California vintage of 2011, a year that was widely regarded at the time as the worst in recent memory for cabernet sauvignon. James Laube, a columnist for Wine Spectator magazine, called it “the most damning vintage in perhaps 15 years.” Yet the six wines…

The Soothing, Digital Rooms of YouTube

Picture this: You’re in the Hogwarts library. Rain falls outside, a fire crackles across the room, and somewhere offscreen, quills scribble on parchment. You might look up from time to time to see a book drifting through the air or stepladders moving around on their own. Or maybe, you’ll feel so relaxed, you nod off…

My Patients Need Me. Can I Quit?

I live in a city that offers Covid vaccines to volunteers who have worked 15 hours at a vaccination site. Not surprisingly, the demand for volunteer slots far exceeds supply. I got my first shot last week. I have more volunteer shifts scheduled for the next few weeks. Should I relinquish those shifts to others,…

Piecing Together the Next Pandemic

Covid-19 arrived in Cambodia a year ago, on Jan. 23, when a Chinese national flew in from Wuhan, the city where the illness was first detected, and soon fell sick with a fever. A P.C.R. test to detect the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, came back positive. With that news, the…