Early Reviews of Apple’s Just-Announced HomePod

At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference yesterday, the tech giant confirmed a long-rumored and highly anticipated product: HomePod, the speaker that promises to marry high-quality audio with an intelligent assistant Siri. The in-house speaker has seven tweeters (each with its own amp), six mics, a high-excursion woofer and measures seven inches in height. Apple gave just a handful of publications the opportunity to compare the HomePod …

California’s Coffee Crop Growth

Between San Diego and Santa Barbara, two dozen California farms have begun to grow coffee bushes under the shade of their aging avocado trees. This is the first commercial effort stateside, aside from Hawaii’s 800 coffee farm deep Kona bean production. It’s proven to be a viable crop, and the output continues to grow in prestige as California growers target the premium coffee consumer. The …

Château Coutet’s Bordeaux From the 1700s

For almost 400 years, 14 generations of one family has owned Bordeaux’s Château Coutet. Here, four years ago, a worker discovered a bottle in a pile of dirt behind a broken wine rack. Everything about the bottle was unusual, including its sealing method (a glass heart). Wine heir Adrien David Beaulieu called upon a world-renowned glass expert and after four years of testing—from the chemical …