Lifestyle

“CHEAP WINES are too good these days.” If that sounds intriguing you might want to read the essay of the same title on the website Wineanorak.Created by Jamie Goode, a scientist-turned-wine-writer in the U.K., Wineanorak is an online “Global Wine Journal” designed to appeal to wine geeks like me. (In British slang, “anorak” means nerd or geek.) I read it on a fairly regular basis along with a few other resources I appreciate for their sheer depth of detail as well as their authoritative information. While reading these won’t automatically make you a geek, they can certainly help nudge you in that direction if that’s what you want. Wineanorak, which Mr. Goode created in 1999, includes winemaker profiles, wine reviews and videos. His essay on cheap wine, published in the “New to Wine” sectio...

Waiting out the pandemic in a high-rise apartment close to the center of a major international city has been a relatively calm experience for Kenny Yeo. Last year, the 32-year-old marketing director bought his first property in London’s Canary Wharf neighborhood, one of the city’s two main financial districts.The apartment is in the Wardian London development, two newly-built towers of 50 and 55 stories which are crammed with greenery. In total they contain 100 different species of exotic plants from around the world, with a lobby which resembles an opulent greenhouse and a swimming pool fringed with palm trees. Mr. Yeo moved into his two-bedroom apartment in the building, where prices currently start at $1.4 million for an 845-square-foot unit, in September 2020. “All the green was one of...

TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS a night for a hotel room with one king-size bed in Nantucket. More than $4,000 a night for a “Desert View Suite” in Utah. Travelers itching to get back on the road are getting an unwelcome surprise: hotel sticker shock. According to a recent survey from travel booking app Hopper, lodging prices in the U.S. are up 42% from earlier this year, and are likely to rise even more by the winter holidays. “We’ve seen crazy high levels at some leisure destinations,” said Hopper economist Adit Damodaran. Why the spike? “Demand for hotels just skyrocketed overnight” around Memorial Day, explained Andrea Stokes, hospitality practice lead at research firm J.D. Power. Plus, many guests chose to stay stateside this year instead of going abroad. The good news: You can still ferret out ...

AH, THE VEXING QUEST to find the pillow of your dreams. Too soft and you must rest your head on your palm for extra support. Too hard and all you can count on is a stiff neck the next morning. While shoppers have long had their pick of stuffing—from memory foam and poly-fill to goose down—too often they get their pillows home from the store and sigh (all night) while attempting to slumber on them. A new breed of highly adjustable models promises to let you fine-tune height and firmness by adding or subtracting filling to suit the exact curvature of your neck and preferred sleep position. The goal of such pillows, according to Dr. Aarti Grover, medical director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Tufts Medical Center, is to support your spinal alignment so you won’t wake up with an achy ne...

IT WAS BREAKFAST time in the Italian border town of Muggia. A few families headed to the waterfront, passing underneath the archways of the Renaissance-era loggia. An old woman led her recalcitrant Maltese into the salumeria past windows displaying Italian sausage, truffles and the Balkan spicy pepper condiment known as ajvar. In this approximately 13,000-person town on the Istrian peninsula, at the point just before Italy dissolves into Slovenia, borders are often imaginary things. Many of the waterfront hamlets of the Istrian peninsula—a piece of land now split among Italy, Slovenia and Croatia—were once Venetian possessions. Even now, they are marked architecturally by distinctive campanile, or bell-towers, as well as by the sort of sinuously sloping windows, many garlanded by vines, se...

WERE YOU EVEN an actor in the 1990s if you didn’t own a leather blazer? During the decade, everyone from comic goldenchild Ben Stiller to “Mask of Zorro” star Antonio Banderas to “The Practice” heartthrob Dylan McDermott (right) could be seen in oil-slick, black leather blazers. It was a look that said “I’m edgy but not, like, that edgy”—a beguiling mix of C-suite tailoring and Hell Angels texture. But as the sun rose on a new millennium, leather blazers faded. Preppy corduroy jackets and tweeds supplanted their glossy minimalism. Recently, however, the look has slithered back into the zeitgeist. This month, Grammy-nominated rapper Jack Harlow wore a vintage leprechaun-green leather Tommy Hilfiger sport coat to the Video Music Awards. One night later, singer Shawn Mendes sported a black l...

Monday’s announcement that a Covid-19 vaccine for children is drawing nearer hit many parents as the first truly good news in months. “I am very excited and relieved,” says Audrey Perrott, a mother in Cary, N.C., with an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old.

Some people are comfortable going to concerts and clubs now. Others draw the line at indoor dining. And some are avoiding nearly all gatherings. People’s assessment of what is safe has varied wildly during the Covid-19 pandemic—often leaving us baffled about why our risk decisions differ so sharply from those of our neighbors, friends and family members. Now, scientists are starting to better understand why.

The 2020-21 season was a transformative one for television. New streamers came online, options were endless, and home screens substituted for movie theaters. Now with the 73rd Emmy Awards on Sunday, TV fans have their chance to root for the shows that helped get them through the pandemic lockdown, boredom and blues. Hits that captured that moment are among the most nominated, including the latest seasons of “The Crown” and “The Mandalorian” (which led with 24 nods each), and debut series such as “WandaVision” (23), “Ted Lasso” (20), “The Queen’s Gambit” (18) and “Bridgerton” (12).

Steve Hofmann of Los Angeles, 55 years old, co-owner of a company that provides specialty cars to the film and television industries, on his 1966 Dodge Town Wagon Power Wagon, as told to A.J. Baime. I grew up in Oakland, Calif., in the hills, and my neighbor had a Jeep CJ-2A. Even before we had our driver’s licenses, we were working on that vehicle, taking it off-road and into town, something you couldn’t get away with these days. I developed an appreciation for utilitarian four-wheel-drive stuff that you didn’t typically see. I mean four-wheel-drive vehicles that you could work on with rudimentary mechanical knowledge, in the field.