There is a plan afoot to revamp the great Napa Valley Auction. For those of you who have never attended this glitziest of wine and food gorgings, well..you just haven’t lived. It’s really too easy to ridicule this greatest of conspicuous displays of wealth and grandeur. So, I’ll hold myself back, suffice to say, the kind of money that is thrown around at verticals, horizontals, celebrity dinners and “once in a lifetime” vacations is really awe inspiring. The fact is,…

It’s not easy being a sinner. For those of us who like a glass of wine, perhaps a slow smoke and a good cold can of diet cola, Washington State wants to make life a bit more difficult, or at least more expensive. It appears Washington Governor Gary Locke is set on raising the tax on these fine goods. Drinkers and smokers are used to paying the tax freight for others. We are sinners after all. Actually, I kind of…

Mendocino County, that much more sparsely populated county north of Sonoma, must be America’s most underrated wine region. And now it appears that county’s vintners and growers want to do something about that with the creation of a state regulated agricultural commission to raise the funds to drive a new promotional effort. As a whole, Mendocino County is amazingly diverse. The inland portions can be very warm. Highway 101 divides this inland region that is the home to Fetzer, Parducci,…

At the risk of becoming circular and responding to blogger’s post that was a response to a post of mine…I’m going be circular. Huge Johnson, responding to to a point I made about about the slow turn in wine styles away from the heavy handed use of oak, made the point that homogenization of wine style is not the problem many think it is. Along the way in making the point Huge gave us a nice visual to work with….

It’s nice to know that with a war in Iraq raging, a new government in Afghanistan to support, a massive debt to service and a major overhaul of social security in the works that the Bush administration’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has the time and resources to police wine ads for “improper” advertising. According to Michael Doyle, a reporter out of Washington regulators are “adopting what they call a ‘more proactive approach,’ as they search for everything…