Posts Tagged ‘california wine’

May 5, 2006

The Digital Wine Cellar

Cellar Tracker is the most popular, and probably the very best, on-line cellar tracker and community wine review site out there. It’s popularity owed to the fact that it’s simply a great system to track what you’ve got and what you’ve drunk as well as what others in the system have had to say about a particular bottle of wine. It’s no coincidence that other similar systems, seeing the success of Cellar Tracker, would pop up. One such newbie in…

May 3, 2006

Vintage On Wine is Less Important Today

It appears the feds have approved new rules that will allow a winery to now only need 85% of a wine to come from a particular vintage in order for it to put that vintage date on its bottle. The rule had been 95% from a single vintage with up to 5% coming from other vintages. However, it appear the new 85-15 rule does not apply to wines with an American Viticultural Area designation on the label. This means that…

May 2, 2006

Hospice of Sonoma: Pinot Noir, Brice Jones and the way things work

You see a lot of events in Wine Country that seem utterly the same. The reason they seem that way is because they probably are. But, before we get our panties in a bunch about sameness, it’s important to realize that some formats for celebrations and events just work. And they work well. The Charitable Wine Auction is a perfect example. It works like this: 1. There is an organization that needs to raise funds to operate2. One or two…

May 2, 2006

I Can’t Help Myself

To quote a friend: "It’s a bit like watching a Civil War Re-enactment. You know who’s going to win." I can’t help myself. The whole fiasco with the celebration tasting (it’s not longer a competition) of the 1976 Paris Tasting is so weird, juicy and fun I just have to offer an update. A quick recap: In 1976 Steve Spurrier held a tasting between CA and French wines. The judges tasted the wines blind. CA wines came out on top….

May 2, 2006

Now THIS is rare wine!

I just get downright excited when I see something like this. Andrew Lane Wines has released a 2004 Napa Valley Gamay Noir. Do you know how rare this wine is? Charles Sullivan, the California wine industry’s unofficial historian, notes that there are no more than two acres of this grape reportedly planted in California…both in Napa Valley. Gamay Noir, also known as "Gamay Noir a jus blanc" is the grape responsible for that potentially very yummy, very refreshing very summerish…