• Running Dry
Strolling into a vineyard behind Turley Wine Cellars, Ehren Jordan announced: "This is the real deal."
    The lanky 40-year-old winemaker was referring to a plot of dry-farmed zinfandel. Situated between Calistoga and St. Helena, its view extended south into the heart of Napa Valley, but the low-profile vines seemed to exist in a different era. Each plant grew on a wooden stake, ten feet from its nearest neighbor; no metal wires were suspended over the vines, and no irrigation hoses snaked among the trunks. As far as this modest eight-acre vineyard was concerned, we could have been in the Napa Valley of 1908.

• Critics Picks 2008
Twelve young sommeliers and wine retailers arrived at L.A.'s Osteria Mozza this spring for the first annual W&S Critics' Picks tasting. They turned up to taste more than 90 wines, pre-selected by the magazine's critics as their personal favorites for exceptional value.

• Great Greek Cheeses
A piece of good bread with a slab of superrich manouri drizzled with honey. A chunk of creamy, salty feta to season a juicy tomato salad. A steak of haloumi grilled to perfection, wood smoke permeating the tangy, mint-spiked cheese. These were just a few of the epiphanies I had when living in Greece. They were even better with a glass of Santorini or another local pour.

• 45 Value brands of the year
What's your Go-To Wine? With more brands than ever fighting for shelf space at your local wine store or supermarket, we'll help narrow the list for you.
    We've combed through a year's worth of tastings–more than 3,900 wines priced at $18 or less. In the pages that follow, we've singled out the brands that repeatedly scored with recommendations for superior value at the price. We feature forty-five standouts here–the American wineries first, followed by the rest of the world, organized by country.

• Tequila Terroir
This February, a new Tequila called Ocho launched in Europe with a small but significant difference from other brands: ach bottling is labeled with the harvest year and name of the agave field from which it came. Tequila is a spirit unusually ripe for the study of terroir as its raw ingredient does not vary, it is grown in a specified region with diverse soils, and it does not need to be aged like whisky or Cognac (so it can be appreciated without the influence of wood). Yet until now brands have provided consumers with only broad clues as to the origin of the agave in each bottle.