Wente Vineyards Louis Mel Estate Sauvignon Blanc 2013 Livermore Valley, CA Wente Vineyards is a Livermore-based wine company and family estate vineyard whose roots, literally, extend back to the late 19th century. It’s a brand I’ve become familiar with in the past year, in part because they are featured on Delta Airlines and gave me
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Lay of the Land Sauvignon Blanc 2015 Marlborough, New Zealand Sauvignon blanc can be a hard sell for me, as I often find it to have broth-like qualities interfering with the crisp acidity that I crave. No such problem with winemaker Mike Paterson’s Lay of the Land, which came to me through my NakedWines.com order.
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Mauricio Lorca’s Angel’s Reserve Torrontes 2015 La Rioja, Argentina Wine Review: Brine sneaks into the clam chowder in this glass. The intense acidity makes me contemplate inserting sizzling grasslands into my next fantasy story. As the wine settles, cream comes in, making that chowder New Jersey in style, with enough vegetal taste to account for
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I was shocked this last August, while at the Wine Bloggers Conference, to learn that chardonnay is still the most popular wine grape in the United States. Indeed, it is the most planted grape in California, at just under 98,000 acres. Why the shock? Chardonnay is often disdained among wine circles for the heavy oak associated
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For the second year in a row, I took part in the Finger Lakes Wine Alliance Riesling Launch, a live-tweeting event that invites wine writers and bloggers to check out the newest vintage (2014) of the region’s signature grape varietal together, virtually at least, with the wineries. I received sample bottles of three different rieslings,
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The world of wine is huge. Finding a wine you enjoy often feels like searching for that proverbial needle in the haystack. If there’s one thing my recent Finger Lakes wine bloggers trip taught me, it’s that there are whole regions of wineries that wine writers like myself have barely heard of, much less sampled
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The Mystery At the annual Wine Bloggers Conference (WBC), one late afternoon/early evening is dedicated to an excursion out of the host hotel and into the wine region itself. Where we bloggers go is a mystery; each tour bus heads to a different location for a wine tasting and dinner, and just where we will
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Last week, I posted about the Cape Classics National Braai Day contest running through September 28, 2015. As promised in that post, here are my reviews of two affordable, and food-ready, Indaba Wines to help you on your quests to compose a winning entry, and most importantly, have a tasty, tasty, fire-cooked braai meal. Obligatory
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Bon Affair is a new wine product from Jayla Siciliano, who funded the project through Shark Tank, ABC’s television show where entrepreneurs meet up with investors. In 2014, Mark Cuban agreed to invest $150,000 in the company for a 35% share. Now, Bon Affair offers sauvignon blanc and syrah versions of its unique wine spritzer.
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A few weekends ago, I hit up my first urban tasting room in Oakland–Jeff Cohn Cellars. I assure you, my guide, Peter of Bung R. Cooper’s wine blog, was not going to let me stop after just one location! We meandered over a few Jack London Square blocks to Urban Legend Cellars (621 4th Street),
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