Greetings wine lovers, and welcome to the New Year. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and got the opportunity to enjoy some really good wine. For the next couple of “Patch on Wine” wine articles, I thought we would talk about one of my favorite wine making countries, and home to some of the best wine values in the world: Spain. Spain is huge, in terms of wine regions and in terms of grapes planted for wine making. As a matter of fact Spain is the No. 1 country in the world in planted grape vines, with 50 percent more than France or Italy. However, Spain produces less wine than …

Greetings wine lovers, and welcome to "Patch on Wine." With this being the debut column on wine appreciation, you might imagine the many, many topics that I considered covering. As a matter of fact my head was spinning with ideas for this first column.  I thought about covering a specific grape growing/wine making area. But I couldn't decide if I should start with France, or Italy, or Spain, or Germany, or Australia, or Chile, or Argentina, or California…. Whoa! The possibilities are endless! Then I thought maybe I'd cover a specific type of grape. But once again, with the hundreds of …