Dinner Menu

From the underground cellars of Champagne to Cava’s Spanish roots and the wild revival of pét-nat, discover how the world learned to put bubbles in a bottle. A story of celebration, experimentation, tradition, and a little beautiful chaos.

Wine doesn't begin in a bottle; it begins on a farm. Explore the people, landscapes, animals, foods, and agricultural traditions that connect vineyards to the table, with wines chosen to tell the story of the places that produced them.

Forget the intimidating vocabulary and complicated tasting rituals. Explore the wonderfully strange stories, happy accidents, rebellious winemakers, and unconventional bottles that prove there’s more than one way to enjoy wine.

Wine has survived invasions, revolutions, occupations, and wars. Follow the vineyards and winemakers who protected their land, hid their bottles, rebuilt after destruction, and sometimes used wine itself as an act of resistance.

For centuries, humans have battled everything from birds and wild boar to insects, disease, frost, and fire to protect the harvest. Discover the ingenious and ,occasionally, bizarre ways winegrowers have defended their vines and livelihoods.

Grapes travel with people. Follow varieties carried across oceans and borders by immigrants, refugees, missionaries, merchants, and dreamers and discover how old-world grapes found unexpected new homes and identities.

Long before tasting rooms and sommeliers, humans were fermenting grapes in clay vessels, trading wine across ancient seas, and pouring it for gods and the dead. Travel to Georgia, Greece, Armenia, Rome and beyond to uncover wine's extraordinary ancient beginnings.

Secret agents, coded messages, diplomatic dinners, and bottles shared behind closed doors. Explore the surprising places where wine, intelligence, politics, and espionage have crossed paths.

When governments, borders, taxes, and Prohibition stood between people and their wine, someone inevitably found another way. Follow the underground routes, secret bottles, and rule-breakers who kept the glasses filled.

From barrels captured at sea to fortified wines surviving long voyages, follow wine through the age of piracy, smuggling, naval trade, and the ports that connected the drinking world.

Wine has played a role in courtship, marriage, poetry, forbidden affairs, and seduction for thousands of years. Follow the bottle through legendary romances and changing rituals of love to discover why wine became so intertwined with matters of the heart.

Every culture has its own way of raising a glass. Travel through drinking rituals, toasts, taverns, celebrations, unusual customs, and late-night traditions to discover what sharing wine tells us about the people drinking it.

Counterfeit bottles, elaborate frauds, stolen collections, poisoned reputations, and fortunes spent on wines that weren't what they claimed to be. Enter the deliciously deceptive side of wine history, where what's inside the bottle is only part of the story.