There are general rules of thumb about wine grape varietals and where they thrive best: Gold Country is great for Zinfandels and Barberas. Napa is the home of the oaky and buttery Chardonnay and the sumptuous Cabernet Sauvignon. The best Pinot Noirs come from Oregon or the Santa Cruz Mountains. But now and again you […]
This strangely warm winter we’ve been having in Northern California, means that weekend escapes to Gold Country don’t mean juggling snow gear or umbrellas. The Sierra Foothills are beautiful to see, with beautiful countryside and fascinating Gold Rush era towns, like Suttercreek and Placerville, to explore. Best of all, it’s winter and it won’t be […]
The El Dorado Winery Association’s biggest event of the year, the Passport 2012, has been scheduled for the weekends of April 14-15 and April 21-22. The Passport is two days of wine tasting and food pairings, this year with 32 participating wineries. For a ticket price of only $65 per person, attendees can visit as many […]
Yesterday was the Grand Re-Opening of their new tasting room / wine making facilities for Urbano Cellars in Berkeley, California. The party started around 1pm and lasted well until after we departed. The party featured free tasting of five of their wines: a Chenin Blanc, Rose, 5 Barrel (a red blend), Sangiovese and a Zinfandel. […]
A friend of mine is working on a new product that is wine and technology related. You can help him out by filling out this market research survey. It is quick to fill out, only a few minutes. None of your personal data will be used to sell anything to you. You’ll be helping somebody […]
What has been a fairly well kept secret, that the California Gold Country is a great place to vacation, is finally getting out. The folks over at Lonely Planet, publishers of travel guides, have named the California Gold Country one of the top US10 travel destinations for 2012. Sandwiched between Boulder, Colorado at #7 and […]
Here is the second in my intermittent series of opinionated interviews with local wine makers. Today’s interview is with Glenn Hugo, the owner and wine maker at Hugo Family Cellars. We conducted this interview late last year. I met Glenn at a hotel in Napa where he was pouring tastings of one of his wines, […]
I was acquainted with Urban Legend Cellars primarily through their Twitter feed. The relaxed and friendly voice behind their tweets encouraged me, and all their other followers, to stop in to their new tasting room located in the Jack London Square neighborhood of Oakland. On a recent weekend afternoon, I did just that. There isn’t […]
The other evening, my partner and I joined some friends at a dinner party in the City. (For those of you who don’t live in the San Francisco Bay Area, “The City” always refers to San Francisco in local parlance.) Our hosts requested that we bring the wine. Now that I’ve written a book about […]
As I mentioned in my earlier post looking forward to 2012, This year I will be posting the occasional interview with wine makers and wine writers. Today is the first of this planned, intermittent series of interviews. These interviews are for my next book, Wine 101, which will be an introduction to wine and wine […]
