Tannic Panic! Issue #134: 2025 Greatest Hits
Kicking off 2026 lazy with a little look back at our best issues of 2025
Happy “new years” you giggle-juice jolly gaggle of winoclasts. We’re just jumping out of our jorts with ideas for 2026 — but what better way to kick off the new year than with a little “in memoriam” for our favorite articles of 2025?
Before we “dive in,” if you’ll “indulge us” in a little poll it will literally make our year
TANNIC PANIC’S BEST OF 2025
Yeast “The Friendly Beast”
In this “iconic issue,” we zoom in on the wonderful little world of “yeast” — our microscopic “little friend” that turns ordinary grape juice into the so-called “happy sauce” we all know and love. We unpack how different yeast strains, both wild and commercial, can make the same variety range in flavor profile from a fruit salad to a “bandaid” (THE GOOD KIND!) depending on “who” is doing the fermenting. With an “homage” to Ridge Vineyards and some “scientific insights” from “our dad,” we explore how these sneaky little fungi take bugs for joy rides, craft complex aromas, and impart delicious bready notes through the underappreciated “process” of autolysis.
This $4 Bottle Ruined My Life
A first hand account of how a humble $4 bottle of Andre sent me on a wonderful little journey that ruined my life.
100 Point Wine From Scratch
In our “milestone” centennial issue, we attempt to build ourselves a 100-pointer from scratch using just two everyday bottles from Total Wine and a healthy dose of elbow grease. After the cheapest “100 pointer” we could find flopped under our own scoring system, we guzzled our way through hypotheses involving milk, lemur juice, and a little “je ne sais quoi” before landing on a surprisingly harmonious blend that almost reaches our lofty goal.
Summer Wine Cocktails
“We” took an extremely wholesome little summer detour to explore some “alternative” ways of imbibing wine when it’s hot out.
Can AI replace somms?
With AI on the proverbial rise, we thought it would be an interesting topic to bring to the table with some of the other talented wine writers on Substack. We kick off the first of a series of articles discussing how we think this new “era” we inadvertently willed ourselves into will impact the people educating and serving you your Zeus juice.
Is Champagne Doomed?
Did you know Champagne is facing a WONDERFUL little mortal threat? Will it still exist in 10 years? WHO KNOWS! Read about it here.
Seduced by a Label
In a “world” where aesthetics and marketing play a major role in “consumer choices,” this issue discusses the literal neuroscience and marketing strategy behind wine labels and then “field tests” the notion that “pretty labels” predict zeus juice quality, highlighting how the “prettiness of wine label” is an ABSOLUTELY terrible quality predictor (UNLIKE ME!).
Labor Intensive Wines
To honor “Labor day,” we decided to pay tribute to some of the world’s most “labor-intensive” wine regions - from Mosel’s extremely steep slate cliffs to Douro’s steep-banked vineyards, where the wines are literally built from the mighty strength and grit of the storied homo sapien doing real “blue collar” work.
Does Vintage Actually Matter?
In this issue, we took a “spirited” look at the often overrated “vintage” as a key metric for determining wine quality. We dive into the role of weather patterns, “global warming, ”site nuance and variable “taste preferences” and why individual palates are often a more important factor than objective measures of “vintage quality.”
Mystery of the “Red Wine Headache”
The so-called “red wine headache” is a commonly talked about, but highly misunderstood “phenomenon.” This issue discusses the common “misconceptions,” along with the most “scientifically plausible” explanations for this wonderful little ailment.
Thanks for toughing it out with us for yet another year of rambling in our drinking jorts. It’s all about “the friends” we make along the way.”
Until next time, HAPPY DRINKING PEOPLE.
Cheers!
Isaac & Zach
Random suggestion: Wines that get an undeserved bad rap, because of a stigma attached to the grape or the region. Specifically Beaujolais. I've always assumed it was a negligible, basically characterless, uninteresting wine. Sort of like the Probably due to reputational damage from cheap mass-market Beaujolais noveau, and gamay-beaujolais. But I've now tasted two Beaujolais wines with a few years of age from good producers that have changed my mind. Now I realize that there is such a thing as seriously good Beaujolais. And I'm sure there are many others that outperform their reputation (Indian wines being another example).