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Cost (in U.S. dollars) of Amazon’s just released Oregon pinot noir from the Willamette Valley. With the help of the large well-known Oregon winery King Vintners, Amazon has launched its own wine label called NEXT. Besides the pinot noir, the Next brand also includes a $20 Oregon pinot gris and a $30 syrah/merlot/cabernet blend from the Oregon side of the Columbia Valley. The wines are available on, ahem, you know where.

French winemakers are not required to use French oak.

Answer: True.

French wine laws are famously restrictive, dictating everything from how the grapes for the wine must be grown to which grape varieties can be grown. But while the regulations may stipulate certain aging requirements, there are none that require French winemakers to use French oak versus, say, American, or Hungarian.

“We entered the wine industry when there were no wine magazines, no wine critics, no 100-point scale—all 23 of us vintners in the Napa Valley in the 1960s. What we learned, we learned from the vineyard itself. Back then, it seemed like less was better.”

— Janet Trefethen (Trefethen Family Vineyards is 50 years old this year)

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