Archive for the ‘Wine Places’ Category
Wine Country beckons to Bay Areans looking for a nearby getaway as well as wine lovers the world over. But if you are like most visitors to Grapeland, your weekend will have you lined up elbow-to-elbow at well-traveled winery tasting rooms, browsing and buying grape-shaped trinkets and eating at the same fancy Wine Country restaurants as the couple that muscled by you at the bar at the last tasting room you visited that day. The solution is to get off…
The Top Ten Words of the 2011 Napa Harvest In my super -un-scientific, un-official, survey of growers, winemakers, owners and finance types in Napa Valley, here are the Top Ten words I hear associated with the 2011 Napa Valley Harvest (in no particular order). 1. Sauvignon Blanc 2. Cold 3. Shatter 4. Short 5. November 6. Picking-Crews 7. 20.1 Brix 8. Labor 9. Delicious 10. Late The average highs and lows for Saint Helena in the middle of Napa Valley…
A story in the NY Times today on the sorry state of the Gravenstein apple market in Sonoma County provided a reminder of the primary force that moves the wine industry. If you like seeing more Pinot on the market, don't thank the movie Sideways. If you worry over the proliferation of big, high pH fruit bombs, don't blame Robert Parker's palate or Jim Laube's preferences. If are trouble by the higher alcohol in wine these days, don't blame new…
You look at the news out the Mosel ("Hailstorms Decimate Mosel") and you must be reminded once again that if you make wine or grow grapes in California, your life is pretty darned good, relative to so many other wine growing regions. The hail storms in the Mosel were reported to consist of tennis and golf ball sized specimens. Grape crops and vines were reportedly destroyed. This kind of thing simply is not common in California. Nor does California usually…
Having lived both in Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley, I’ve developed some opinions and observations about these two very different but neighboring wine country locations. The visitor to the region should be aware of these differences if only to be prepared to appreciate each valley for its uniqueness 1. Napa Valley is a Wine Disneyland, while Sonoma Valley is a Wine Region No getting around this. Napa Valley is all wine all the time, while Sonoma Valley is all wine….
