Wine & Song
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Introducing Lompoc’s Pali Wine Company
Letting Nature Do the Work
Less nurture, more nature: That’s the gist of an increasingly popular tendency among winemakers who wish to spotlight the virtues of a piece of land while downplaying their own skills at blending, barreling, fining, and aging. Read story.
Report from the 3rd Annual Old Spanish Days Wine Tasting at the Sunken Gardens
Viva la Vino!
Saturday, July 12, was a perfect summer afternoon for Elements Restaurant’s 3rd Annual Old Spanish Days Wine Tasting. Read story.
Rick Longoria’s Fe Ciega
Vineyard Profile
It pays to have faith. Just ask Rick Longoria, who found the site for his Fe Ciega Vineyard—Spanish for “blind faith”—through a chance meeting at a barbeque. Read story.
Japan’s Gift to Wine Lovers
The Koshu Grape
When I think of Japan, I think of all the things I love about it — the measured and graceful restraint of Japanese cuisine; Read story.
The Best Wine Events of 2008
Something for Every Wine Lover
Some of the best wine events in the United States are held in California. Whether you’re a die-hard cab fan, a pinot noir freak, or a syrah nut, California delivers well-organized, fun, and star-studded wine events annually. Here’s this year’s slate. Read story.
New Year’s Resolutions from a Self-Proclaimed Wine Geek
How to Drink Great in 2008
It’s that time of year again when many of us reassess the previous year and make crucial decisions about our lives moving forward into the future. Some of us are dreamers and still create New Year’s resolutions, despite knowing that we may not meet half or even any of them. Read story.
Recommended Wine Books for the Holidays
Pictures and Words
Fall and winter are two seasons that truly lend themselves to reading. I know there are always “summer reading lists” composed during vacation season, but I love to crack open a book when it’s cold or rainy outside and I have a bit of leisure time and solitude on my side. It helps if one is sipping a good vintage port and sitting beside a fire during these contemplative moments. Read story.
A Tour through Winemaker Daryl Sattui’s Napa Valley Château
A Man’s Winery Is His Castle
About 14 years ago, rumors started to spread across the Napa Valley that long-time resident and vintner Daryl Sattui (owner of the famed V. Sattui Winery and tourist destination) was building himself a castle. I was living in the Napa Valley at the time, and many of the locals gossiped about how the castle would be gaudy, tacky, and would lead to the “Disneyland-ification” of the Napa Valley. Well, rumors be damned. Read story.
Tres Hermanas Vineyard & Winery
Santa Barbara County’s Newest Tasting Room Keeps It Real
Luke Lindquist has winemaking in his blood. His father, Bob, is one of the most celebrated winemakers in the United States, having produced syrahs of great character, year in and year out, for more than 15 years under his iconic Qupé label. His brother, Ethan, has established a loyal following with his Ethan brand of wines. Now Luke, 32 years old and boyishly handsome, has joined forces with Santa Maria Valley’s esteemed Teixeira family, a well-respected agricultural family who farms row crops successfully and runs large herds of cattle. Read story.
Artist Bob Dickey’s de-Wine Inspiration
O, Sweet Muse
I met Bob Dickey a few years ago and identified him immediately as an artist. Dickey can be in a room full of people, all of them milling about, all immersed in their conversations about what it is they do for a living, or where they plan to vacation, and there will be Dickey … entranced by a certain slant of light coming through a living room window and illuminating a vase. Read story.
The Web’s Gift to Wine Lovers
The Best Wine Blogs in Cyberspace
It was bound to happen. All its old-world charm — visions of sun-ripened clusters hanging on the vine; cool, dark, fragrant cellars lined with oak barrels; teams of harvest workers picking pinot clusters by hand — doesn’t seem to lend itself to the computer age. But, in fact, many wine lovers these days discover wines, meet fellow wine lovers, and, yes, buy wine, all via the Internet. Read story.
Cellar-Worthy Discoveries
Stellar Wines that Wow the Palate
Like many die-hard, smitten, obsessed wine lovers, I am always on the lookout for new wines with which to fall in love. In order to become an object of my adoration, a wine must hold my interest, it must captivate my senses, it must make me want to return to it again and again by virtue of its complexity and charm, and, finally, it must have personality. When you talk about a wine’s personality, you enter the realm of the ineffable. Read story.
The Art of Wine Tasting without Getting Drunk
Smell, Swirl, and Spit
When I first started visiting wineries and tasting wine in earnest about 20 years ago, I was too embarrassed to spit out my wine. Besides, dump buckets are gross and the last thing I wanted to look into after tasting a nice wine was somebody else’s spit. Yuck. So, I’d go wine tasting (at that time, up and down Highway 29 in the Napa Valley) practically every weekend just to educate my palate, but, truth be told, there were numerous occasions upon which I really shouldn’t have been driving toward the end of a day of wine tasting. Read story.
Santa Maria Wine Country
S.B. County’s Newest Vintners Association
Santa Maria Valley, long considered one of the premiere wine growing regions along California’s southern Central Coast for pinot noir, chardonnay, and cool-climate syrah, has formed its own vintners association. The association is following in the footsteps of associations founded in recent years in other county appellations, including the Santa Rita Hills Winegrowers Alliance and the Santa Ynez Valley Wine Trail. Read story.
A Matter of Taste
When Is a Wine Balanced?
It turns out that talking about balance in a wine becomes a subjective undertaking pretty quickly. Some winemakers consider their wines balanced if they prove to taste integrated in their youth; if there is an ample amount of fruit, oak, and spice in a given wine, then it is, in their eyes, balanced. Other winemakers consider a wine to be balanced if it adheres to certain principles, such as if it is varietally correct. Does it possess a reasonable, but not high, amount of alcohol? Read story.
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