Atop the Santa Cruz Mountains at the end of a long, winding dirt road you’ll find Ridge Vineyards. They have been around as long as we’ve been in California. In fact, their website says...
At the August 17 Family Winemakers tasting in San Mateo, we discovered Sojourn Cellars and their excellent pinot noir. While doing research on Sojourn’s website we ran across the story of...
We hesitated before accepting this invitation from our friends at Artisan Wine Depot. As members of the baby boom generation, our taste buds have deteriorated along with some of our other faculties...
Rob Murray Vineyards rounds out our top six from the Family Winemakers Tasting August 17. Despite bottling under four labels, production is fairly small, usually under 500 cases per wine variety per...
[pullquote]Because we make our Pinots from just five small blocks, production is small. That said, we love new members and encourage collectors to join our mailing list. I personally set up members...
Blair Estate Wines is another winner from the Family Winemakers tasting August 17. Another reminder: our top six picks are very, very close. You will not go wrong with a pinot from any of these...
[Updated September 9, 2014. Minor corrections to pricing for both wines as well as their lineages. Route 152 is an even better bargain at $10 than it was at the price we originally posted, $18!]...
[Corrected September 4, 2014 per e-mail from Bryan Vais. We got several facts wrong about the Foray. Our apologies for not doing enough research.] We arrived at Bailiwick late in our tasting and...
One of the few non-pinot-noir wines we tasted at the Family Winemakers tasting August 17 was Vezér Family Vineyards Dragon’s Breath blend ($37, 2009 vintage). The wine itself has a faint aroma...
[September 2, 2014: half a dozen minor changes per information supplied by Nate Belden.] At the Family Winemakers tasting August 17 we reviewed over 20 wineries and tasted at least 35 pinot noirs...
We had originally planned for this to be one long post reviewing the top six wineries. When that document started approaching 3,000 words we decided to use a more nuanced approach. This article is...
Friday (August 29) I dropped by Artisan Wine Depot to pick up a couple of bottles of sauvignon blanc I had ordered. Naturally, once I got there, I did a little shopping. I noticed that they had two...
[pullquote]In effect, the L.A. County Supervisors have told the Malibu wineries, “Drop dead.”[/pullquote] The new Malibu Coast AVA might be DOA. Today the Los Angeles County Board of...
[Update August 26 12:30 pm. Berryessa News has produced a Youtube video using an aerial drone. The Trefethen winery is the subject. A historic winery building, vintage 1886, was badly damaged...
We plan to attend the Family Winemakers tasting August 17 in San Mateo. We will be occasionally live-tweeting. We have put together an Excel workbook that contains basic information about each...